Okay, I made the Before Watchmen joke yesterday, but…

“One of the major iconic DC characters will reveal that he is gay in a storyline in June,” Courtney Simmons, DC Entertainment’s senior vice president of publicity, confirmed to ABC News.

June? That’s when Before Watchmen starts, isn’t it…? Sadly, Rorschach isn’t out until July, otherwise I really genuinely would put my metaphorical money on him… That said, you’ve got to give DC credit for teasing this (minor?) reveal out – by Simmons giving us a gender for the first time, the speculation on the character’s identity (and therefore, the story) gets at least another day of life, making DC seem progressive right before Marvel plays up their “Northstar gets married” Astonishing X-Men issue on ABC’s The View. Sneaky, sneaky…

(Via DC Women Kicking Ass.)

Place your bets, DC fans:

Surprisingly, [DC Co-Publisher Dan] DiDio stated that they had changed DC’s policy in this regard. And they are about to reintroduce a previously existing DC character who was previously straight and now will be “one of our most prominent gay characters.”

One of my favorite guesses on social media has been Donna Troy, but a truly part of me really hopes that it’s going to be a Watchmen character, just to see if the internet could get any more upset about Before Watchmen…

This Guardian piece about Before Watchmen is well worth reading, if only because I feel that it’s the first time Dan Didio explicitly addresses the controversy over the ownership of the Watchmen series and characters, or Alan Moore’s condemnation of the project. His comments are weirdly telling, and weirdly empty at the same time:

DC says Watchmen was “a work for hire agreement at the start”, however. And it provides such a rich basis for prequels, according to DiDio. “The stories and ideas are so well defined, and there are so many throwaways in the body of the original work, a one-line mention or a side item or a cameo shot of a character, that were basically great wonderful springboards we could grow the world from,” he said. “That’s why when everybody says this is a finite story, true if you’re looking at the beginning, middle, end of that particular story itself. But when you’re talking about the characters, there’s nothing finite about them. They have endless possibilities in the types of stories we could tell with them. And like I said we’ve found the right creators to tell those stories.”

I have no particular horse in the Before Watchmen race, but I am endlessly amused by the line about people who think Watchmen being finite are correct “if you’re looking at the beginning, middle, end of that particular story itself.” The beginning, middle and end are the entire story!

Damon Lindelof explains how fan obsession led to his upcoming Batman: Black and White comic with Jeff Lemire:

What happened was that I basically became obsessed with Jeff [Lemire]. [Laughs] I read “Sweet Tooth” and was like, “Holy shit. Who is this guy?” I googled him and found out about “Essex County,” so I ran out and grabbed the collected edition and read it cover to cover. Then I tweeted about him and about how awesome “Sweet Tooth” was. And then, he tweeted back at me, we exchanged email addresses and just started talking to each other.

For this project in particular, it all happened through [Editor] Ben Abernathy at DC. I’m trying to remember if Ben reached out to me first, or if Ben reached out to Jeff and then Jeff emailed me and was like, “Do you want to work on a Batman story?” When Jeff Lemire asks you if you want to work on a Batman story, you say, “Yes.” First off, that guy can write, so he’s not just doing the art; you’ve got a collaborator all the way. And he’s never drawn that character before, so I was like, “This sounds like the greatest thing ever.”

One of these days, I’m going to figure out how to do this Twitter thing properly.

Well, this is very weird:

A number of DC subscribers have contacted Bleeding Cool rather annoyed that DC Comics have told them that they can no longer get their favourite books in this fashion, and they will be cancelled with issue 10.

Which means Justice League International readers will miss the final two issues of that comic, and unless they object, will receive issues of Superman instead. And subscribers to Aquaman will be switched to Justice League (and pocket the difference in price) and Justice League Dark subscribers will, bizarrely, be switched to Batman: The Dark Knight.

Swamp Thing also turns out to be included in the seemingly inexplicable sub cancellation. It’s obviously not that the books are being cancelled because even though both Justice League titles may be in danger – well, JLI is already ending with #12 – there’s no way that either Swamp Thing or Aquaman are facing their end anytime soon bar a disastrous event at DC. So what’s going on, exactly? Is Warners/DC trying to limit subscriptions to what it considers “core” titles (Justice League, Superman, Batman: The Dark Knight and Batman are the named replacements that we know about so far) in order to strengthen branding, or is this something else? And if so, what…?

In terms of sheer goofy charm, it’s hard to resist this book trailer for Bill The Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman, a new non-fiction title about Bill Finger:

Author Marc Tyler Nobleman writes about the making of the trailer on his blog, including some secrets of low-budget filmmaking:

In the “Robin approaching” shot, I was worried that the reflective Nike logo on the black running pants I was wearing would be visible. It was not.

In the Batcave computer room shot, I was worried that the cursor on the computer screens would be visible. It was not.

I hope everyone who wondered who the Green Lantern was in DC’s FCBD issue has seen this month’s DC solicits:

GREEN LANTERN ANNUAL #1
Written by GEOFF JOHNS
Art by ETHAN VAN SCIVER
Design cover
On sale AUGUST 29 • 48 pg, FC, $4.99 US • RATED T
• The conclusion of “THE REVENGE OF BLACK HAND”!
• Everything changes here! EVERYTHING!

And not just that one, either…

SUPERMAN ANNUAL #1
Written by KEITH GIFFEN
Art by CAFU and others
Cover by TYLER KIRKHAM and BATT
On sale AUGUST 29 • 48 pg, FC, $4.99 US • RATED T
• Abducted by a group of mysterious aliens, Superman is dragged to a remote alien galaxy to take part in THE GAMES, a world hopping game of cat-and-mouse where players are hunted for sport.
• Can even the help of a mysterious new GREEN LANTERN overcome the might of an alien empire?

If the new GL is making his debut in Superman Annual and not the Green Lantern series, then that’s an interesting way to (a) bring some attention to what otherwise looks like a generic one-shot, and (b) tie the various DCU families together before next year’s Trinity War storyline. But would they really dare do it…?

Definite must-read of the day is Chris Eckert’s oral history of DC’s Countdown to Final Crisis, constructed from various interviews given about the project by those involved with its creation in one way or another, along with commentary giving historical context from Eckert:

[Editor Mike] MARTS: For the first four books, we’ve brought in Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray, Adam Beechen, Sean McKeever, and Tony Bedard. These are our key writers who will be working with Paul in the beginning, but also that doesn’t stop us from bringing other writers in to work on the project… If we choose to crossover with another storyline or a book which is being driven by another writer, we can allow that writer to come onboard and tell their portion of the story inside Countdown and working with Paul. That way, there will be a real feeling of cohesiveness between the series and Countdown, but it also allows the writer to maintain some level of input and control over the character they’re writing on a monthly basis.

In case anyone is curious, this never happened.

MARTS: [The artistic lineup is] pretty much set…the artists that readers will see over the first ten or so issues are for the most part our “core” group: [Jim] Calafiore, Lopez, Saiz and Magno.

Calafiore drew four issues (50, 45, 39, 36), Lopez drew parts of three issues (48, 43, 37), Saiz drew six and part of a seventh (51, 46, 38, 34, 30, 19, 12) and Magno drew eight (49, 44, 42, 33, 27, 25, 22, 8). In all, the “core” group had art appear in only 21 out of 51 issues, with the bulk of the series drawn by eleven other pencillers and a total of sixteen inkers.

It’s a brutal, spectacular, depressing look at a series that sums up what may justifiably be called DC’s lowest point in recent memory. Seriously, go read and feel bad about comics.

UPDATE MAY 17: The official fall schedule has been revealed for the CW, and we now know where Arrow fits in. The new DC Comics series will be airing at 8pm on Wednesday nights, as a lead-in to the popular genre series Supernatural, giving CW a “Kick-A** Wednesday Night,” said a press release. The series, and their full fall schedule, should launch October 2012.

Original Story: Deadline.com reports Friday afternoon the CW has officially picked up Arrow – the Green Arrow-based hour-long drama.

30 year-old Canadian Stephen Amell plays the title role. The series is helmed by David Nutter, who directed the Smallville, Supernatural and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles pilots, and written and executive produced by Andrew Kreisberg, Greg Berlanti and comic book veteran Marc Guggenheim.

More importantly to our readers, CW has also picked up The Carrie Diaries, a Sex and the City prequel series.

CW’s official description follows after the jump.

(more…)

Considering that Marvel currently has (a) a record-breaking movie that everyone is talking about, and (b) wrested control of the Diamond chart back handily, thanks to an event that is going gangbusters, it’s got to feel weird over at DC right now to lose the magic that they’ve seemingly had since the September relaunch, right…? Especially when you see Marc-Oliver Frisch lay it all out like this, over at the Beat:

Sales of the average DC Universe title are at 32,897 units in March, which is well within the spectrum of the last few years, as the average-sales charts at the end of the column show. Likewise, DC’s total unit and total dollar sales are firmly back in familiar territory. Of the individual “New 52″ titles, 18 sold fewer than 20,000 units in March, up from 14 in February. Also notably in this context, the overall DC Universe imprint had 32 titles below the 20K mark in March 2012, which is three more than it did in March 2011 and more than twice the number from March 2010.

Even discounting the lower-selling licensed adaptations, which were published by WildStorm prior to 2011, it’s still 15 DC Universe titles below 20,000 in March 2010, versus 22 in March 2011, versus 29 in March 2012. So while the top-selling series remain relatively stable overall, there is a considerably bigger drop-off the farther down the chart you go.

…Ouch.

Go and read all of Frisch’s column for more detail on the winners and losers at DC right now (and, as ever, to get depressed about Vertigo).

Bryan Hitch makes another DC variant cover appearance with this cover for Action Comics #10:

Thought #1: So, America’s Got Talent is six issues, right? So we’ve got, what, until San Diego before DC announces a special Bryan Hitch-illustrated project, do you think?

Thought #2: Isn’t it kind of amazing how iconic the t-shirt and jeans look already is for Superman, less than a year after it debuted? How did that happen?

Wait, why are you reading this? Watch! Here it is:

Bane does sound clearer, doesn’t he? The trailer debuts in theaters this weekend in front of, would you believe it, Marvel’s The Avengers. The Dark Knight Rises, director Christopher Nolan and star Christian Bale’s third and final Batman film, is scheduled for release on July 20.

These are spectacular: Fictional anti-drug PSAs from Gotham City, with its very particular reasons to stay away from all manner of chemicals.

Thank Andrew Bridgeman and Dorkly.

Must-read #2 of the day: Chris Roberson on his recent experiences with DC:

In fact starting at the beginning of February I did a number of interviews that were specifically and only about that, but I think that because many of them were audio podcasts, no one took the time to listen to them all the way through and realize that I was saying all these very disagreeable statements about company policy, and in some cases much more confrontational and inflammatory than what I ended up getting castigated for. So yeah, I expected at any moment for there to be blowback, but no one appeared to be paying attention until the day that three of my tweets were quoted on Bleeding Cool. And within two hours of that appearing on Bleeding Cool, I got a call that I was no longer was employed by the company.

And they told you that the reason for this was because of what you’d written on Twitter. Yeah, and specifically the one tweet which questioned the ethics of the company. Because I have done one or two work-for-hire things using DC properties I would occasionally get questions from readers asking was there a chance I would work on X character or this particular book, and after I said I don’t have any intention of working for DC again, somebody said, “So you’re not going to work on Legion of Superheroes then?” and I said, “In a better world, characters like the Legion would be owned by a more ethical company, but sadly not in this one.” That was enough apparently to inflame the ire of the higher-ups at DC.

Again, so much more at the link, including a change in creator-owned contracts at DC, hints at what Roberson is doing next (“[A]ll creator-owned stuff, meaning that I own it and the artist owns it”) and a sign that the comics internet isn’t all snark and bile: “I will say though that within minutes of me saying I didn’t want to work for DC anymore on Twitter, I not only got questions from readers, but I was also contacted by other publishers.”

Heidi Macdonald has a must-read piece about Before Watchmen, comic culture and creator freedom up:

So yeah, there was a different mood all that time back when WATCHMEN was created. Vertigo and Image and the Legends line at Dark Horse, and the Bravura (!) line at Malibu and Tundra and many other things—some that failed horribly, some that made it—were all testament to the idea that by giving creators some freedom and equity and treating them like stars you would make great comics and sell lots of them. Marvel was out of it at that point due to the horrible Perelman years. And that led to the distributor wars, and the implosion and the crash and since then every penny has been counted. And storing up your IP and squeezing it for every drop of revenue and then squeezing it some more is the modus operandi for most publishers. Creators are useful for enlivening that IP and relaunching it, and crossing it over and sitting in retreats and figuring out how to eventize it. You couldn’t do any of that without creators, in fact. But luckily for the publishers, there are editors to make sure the creators color inside the lines and stay on target and keep that legacy IP flowing. And a long line of eager new replacement creators who want to be given the chance to go to that retreat. And retailers who know that their customers will only order something they know, and readers going into stores who only want to relive their nostalgia, and before you know it, an entire system based on retreading old ideas is in place.

And before you know it, you have a pre-sold hit like BEFORE WATCHMEN.

And that’s where we are today.

I’ve spoken to quite a few of the people working on the BEFORE WATCHMEN books. And they are all proud of their work. I’m not going to gainsay their pride. And I’m not going to call them sellouts or other names. I’ve said a few things here and elsewhere but I will no longer question their motives. Don’t hate the player, hate the game.

And also…can you imagine what the message boards are going to be like when these books come out, no matter how well made they are? That’s going to be punishment enough.

So much more at the link. Go read.

(Similarly a must-read: The comments thread for an earlier post on the subject, in which Marc-Oliver Frisch makes the important observation that may be getting ignored in a lot of discussion about everything surrounding BW: “BEFORE WATCHMEN is DC selling off its crown jewels, basically. They’re going to make a lot of money, but they’re also watering down the most successful stand-alone book in their stable, while simultaneously reminding creators to never, ever give them anything of real value. Will the sales they get out of this be worth the longer-term damage? I seriously doubt it.” Watchmen‘s strength for a lot of people was that it wasn’t a multi-book franchise. Now it is. The question is whether the greater public will accept that change, whether it’ll become another Scarlett, and what damage will be done to Watchmen as a result. Because, let’s face it: No matter how good the Before Watchmen books are, this isn’t going to make people go “Hey, that Watchmen book is so much better than I ever realized!”)

Speaking at the LA Times Festival of Books this weekend, DC co-publishers Dan Didio and Jim Lee broke their silence about the public resignation/hurried removal of writer Chris Roberson. Roberson, who tweeted last week that once he completed his agreed-upon work for the publisher’s Fairest title, he wouldn’t be working for DC anymore in light of business practices he couldn’t reconcile with his own ethics (particularly around Before Watchmen and the treatment of Alan Moore), was then removed from Fairest by the publisher. Lee responded to the issue by saying that,

I don’t know the writer Chris and it certainly would have helped if I could have talked to him or if he had reached out to me. I didn’t know he felt that way so it was surprising to see that. It seemed odd to me as a creator, I would not publicly state I have a problem with the company that’s paying me to do work for them and I’m going to quit after I do this one project. It would seem wise to me to wait until you finished the project to voice that complaint. You have to imagine from our perspective, for our own internal morale, what does it say for a company to hire somebody who’s that vocally against our principles and yet we’re still paying them. From that standpoint, it doesn’t make any sense.

Didio was far more blunt:

As far as I’m concerned, he made a very public statement about not wanting to work with DC and we honored that statement.

The entire panel, in which Didio and Lee respond to criticism of DC over Before Watchmen publicly for what may be the first time, is worth looking at. Somewhat controversially, Lee, famously one of the “nicest man in comics,” suggests that public opinion of the DC vs. Alan Moore debate is based on a misreading of the situation:

This is not a situation where we have taken things from Alan. He signed an agreement and yet he said ‘I didn’t read the contract.’ I can’t force him to read his contract. So there’s all these things that people don’t know and Alan has said that explicitly – there are all these things that mitigate or go into the analysis. It’s not as clear-cut as people want to make it seem… It’s not a situation where we’re using the characters and Alan’s not being compensated. For everything that’s been done for Watchmen from the books to the movie, money has gone his way. The right amount that he deserves based on the contract. So we have honored that part of the agreement. It is something that can definitely be debated but to say that there is clearly one side that is right, I will dispute that.

Didio, meanwhile, sticks to the company line of “It’s all about the work”:

And we would not have gone forward if we didn’t think the talent was available to be perfectly honest. That’s actually one of the things that slowed us down. And the talent didn’t want to participate unless they felt they had a key story to tell. Darwyn Cooke was one of the first people asked and he turned me down because he didn’t know what to do with it. And then a year later he comes back and he knew how to make the story work. Then we’re off to the races.

Go read Collider’s transcript here.

How important to Warners is the legal decision against Marc Toberoff from earlier this week? As Jeff Trexler explains, very:

If the court in Pacific Pictures should decide that there was indeed a substantial conflict of interest, the consequences could go well beyond Toberoff’s removal as attorney for the Siegel and Shuster heirs. As we saw in when reviewing the appellate briefs, WB argues that Toberoff’s interference led the Siegel heirs to improperly reject a generous binding settlement. A finding against Toberoff on the conflict-of-interest issue would only reinforce WB’s effort to erase the impression that this is a dispute between a noble family and a greedy corporation, a reframing of the case that could exert a subtle but significant influence on the court’s decision on the legal issues.

Could a shift in opinion against the Siegel’s lawyers really cause enough of a change that the case will turn against them? Surely it couldn’t reflect so badly on the family that the case turns against them completely…

Hope you weren’t waiting for the paperback edition of the collected Legion Lost series by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning and Oliver Coipel:

Please note that orders for the LEGION LOST TP (FEB120261) have been cancelled. This item will not be resolicited.

Unless I’ve missed some, this is the first paperback to be cancelled by DC in awhile; I thought that perhaps we were out of the danger zone for such things, but apparently not. I’m curious just how small the orders must’ve been for this, so we could work out a baseline for DC’s trade cut-off point…

It’s apparently all about the mainstream publicity these days; not only are Marvel promising media coverage for the upcoming wedding in Astonishing X-Men and “when universes collide” crossover in Spider-Men, but DC is now talking about the TV ads it’ll have to support Before Watchmen, New-52-style:

Given the fact that Watchmen has been a strong perennial seller in bookstores for years, and has a sterling literary reputation—it was the only graphic novel on Time Magazine’s list of the “Top 100 Novels”—it has been read by a huge number of people who don’t regularly read comics.  TV ads appear to be among the best possible ways of reaching those potential customers and informing them about the Before Watchmen books.

Call me cynical, but it strikes me that targeting the non-comic-reading audience and saying “There’s now more Watchmen!” isn’t something you should do for the original publication, but the subsequent collections – Isn’t that format the one more likely to appeal to an audience that doesn’t have experience paying $3.99 for one small chapter of the story…?

…Aaaaaand here’s the bit where we all get that little bit more nervous about Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel movie, courtesy of Dylan Sprayberry, who plays the young Clark Kent in said movie:

When Zack [Snyder] and I were talking about it the first time, he was saying how Superman, they want to give it a more edgy feel like The Dark Knight but also make it more realistic and emotional so it’s not just the all-American superhero that saves everyone. He has dilemmas and love and struggles throughout the whole movie, especially when he’s a kid.

Firstly: “A more edgy feel like The Dark Knight“? It’s Superman. Secondly: “Make it more realistic and emotional”? Again, it’s Superman. If you’re concerned with making Superman “more realistic,” I really do start to worry that you don’t get the core appeal of “Alien sent to Earth from dying planet, turns into superhero and saves the day a lot.”