Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities New 52 cancellations and replacement titles

I think it might be a better indication that buyers have tried the New 52 and are abandoning it. So Didio clearly failed in maintaining the old and in starting his own fresh thing. How many chances will they give him?

If nobody bought the New 52 at all Didio would be whining that the work was good "but nobody even gave it a chance!" Which frankly would be a fair point.

Take heart from the D&D example: Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition is so different from ALL previous editions as to rightly be called a different game. Now of course it's going to have some fans, but this is the shortest turnaround to a new edition being announced and playtested ever, 4 years!

In the meantime, another company, Paizo, continued Third Edition (now called Pathfinder) under the Open Game License and are now their main competition. That, plus the Old School Renaissance of players using earlier edition has shown D&D the light.

The next edition will supposedly accommodate styles of play for all editions. They may fail at that, but they're trying.

[tangent] Huge Paizo / Pathfinder fan. I have all their stuff. I wonder what it would be like if there was an 'open comic license' and third parties could write stories set in the DCU? Meh. Not workable, from an Intellectual Property standpoint, I suppose. [/tangent]

There was, in that copyright used to expire, but Disney managed to essentially change the rules.

Dude, I understand your frustration. But if it hadn't been Didio, it would have been somebody else making decisions that were just as misguided.

Radical reformers are no more going to rise to the upper echelons of DC-Warner than they're gonna' rise to the upper echelons of The Catholic Church. That's not how giant, top-down organizations work, regardless of what's selling well this year and what's not.

While my regular pull list has whittled down to almost nothing. I must admit that a few of these do tempt me. Kindt and Fisch writing one shots about Deadshot and Metallo? That sounds cool enough. I'm just worried how much of it they'll write and how much will be dictated by the crossover.

Another interesting article talking about the wasteland of creativity that is DC these days -

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2013/06...ks-about-leaving-dc-and-marvel-for-boom/

The new 52 had unlimited potential, it isn't the fault of lifelong fans of DC's characters that the potential was snafu'ed. The first 6 months or so of many titles were pretty good.

Meanwhile, I'm just really really enjoying sinking tits deep back into the Marvel universe. I know it is still early, but Marvel NOW **feels** more successful to me than the New 52 when it was at this same point... maybe because these are still the same Marvel characters they were in the 70s and 80s...

Of course, with DC even before the new 52 many of their characters weren't really the same characters from the 70s and 80s.

Anyway, I have a strong suspicion at this point that we'll be seeing Action Comics #1000 published sometime in the early 2020s.

EDE:



Not for lack of trying. Hal Jordan, Barry Allen, Oliver Queen, Kara Zor-El...

Wow, hadn't thought of that. They've been trying for YEARS to go back in time. Then they about face again.

Kinda reminds you of New Coke, doesn't it?

Marvel's current success is that each title stands completely on its own, under the vision of the creators. And most of their series are thriving because of it.

I haven't been this impressed by Marvel ever in my "buy off the rack" lifetime (roughly 1990/92-Present).

Really? That's the point of Marvel Now? I'm impressed they came to their senses. Let's see how long they hold off the next "event".

Cobie, you missed some really good off-the-rack years in the 70s and 80s at Marvel. 90s was when Marvel began its slow descent into the shitter, as you are well aware.

Although I will give them props... they always managed to have at least a couple of titles that kept me onboard... SHE-HULK... INHUMANS... Allred's X-FORCE/X-STATIX... ULTIMATES... SUPREME POWER... EXILES... DnA's GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY... FRANKLIN RICHARDS... MARVEL ZOMBIES... YOUNG AVENGERS... and a few more I am sure I'm forgetting.

But I think most of us can commend them for never tossing out all of their multiverse babies, bathwater, and washbasins... MULTIPLE TIMES!

Marvel, it's hard for a hardcore DC fanboy to admit... but YOU are the BETTER comics company.

Their INFINITY event was the point of their FCBD offering this year and hits solicits next month. Six issue mini, not sure how it will tie in with books outside Avengers...

Some of the title choices puzzle me, but I am happy about that the Fawcett characters are being featured in comics. If they get the marketing right, these characters are sure to be a success. I became interested in the Fawcett characters because of a friend, but must admit that the original successful marketing of the characters cemented my support.

Marvel toyed around with their Ultimates line, attempting to find ways to make their iconic properties (like Captain America and Iron Man and Thor) more 'accessible' to the modern day audience, without messing with the actual mainstream continuity versions of Cap and Thor, etc.

DC was a tiny bit handicapped by their original decision, way back in Crisis on Infinite Earths, to do away with alternate versions of Superman, Batman, etc. to 'strengthen their core brands' by having only one definitive version of each character. That might have made sense, in the sense of 'brand dilution = bad' from a marketing perspective, but now they are in the awkward position of having to reboot their entire continuity when they want to reposition characters for movie and TV launches. (As opposed to just flat out going the Smallville and Arrow routes and having their different media interpretations be significantly different than their comic book versions, which seems, IMO, to be working just fine...)

I really see DCs flailing around in this arena being nearly three decades old fallout from the thinking that led to Crisis on Infinite Earths in the first place (too much brand dilution will confuse the poor dumb readers!) and an epic fail on the part of DCs marketing people, who have *still* not figured out that the people who go to see Batman movies (or Iron Man movies) are *not* a 100% correlation with people who buy Batman comic books (or Iron Man comic books).

The comic books readers are, for the most part, going to go anyway, and no matter how many of them kvetch about this or that detail being 'wrong,' they'll keep coming *and* they'll be outnumbered by the people who will go to see a Batman (or Iron Man) movie and have never read a Batman comic in their life, and, no matter how epic the movie is, *never will.*

Where DC *does* seem to have figured it out is with their animation department. Young Justice, for instance, was a pretty radical departure from conventional Justice League, Teen Titans *or* Young Justice continuity, and exceeded all expectations because of that, IMO. Now it's been discontinued, partly I suspect, for the same 'brand dilution' issue, and will be relaunched, if ever, as some homogenized marketing-friendly-by-the-official-playbook part of the greater franchise.

Occasional flashes of out of the box brilliance at Marvel *sometimes* get noticed, and incorporated. Occasional flashes of out of the box brilliance at DC seem more likely to get ruthlessly culled and forced into the same flavorless one-size-fits-all brand.

See I think a crossover event within the titles of a given franchise is fine. In fact, it's an actual event, in that it's trying to be something cool for the people who are already interested in the characters rather than trying to get every customer of the entire line excited and buying it.

Lash--I WISH I could have been buying off the rack in the 60's, 70's and 80's! Particularly the X-Men in the Claremont years. That must have been incredible!

Set, great post with a ton of great points!

Not sure how Infinity will be but their recent Age of Ultron event was totally set to the side for customers to decide if they wanted in or not. The individual titles has tie-ins that were not part of the actual numbering; they were really one shots with #AU as the number. So I was able to skip every single issue and be none the wiser. From a "don't want to be bothered by it" perspective it was the best crossover ever for me! I've enjoyed all the series I collect with no interruption!

Well that's a step in the right direction. Now if only they can get rid of variant covers.

I loudly applaud Marvel's usage of the special numbering for its ULTRON tie-in issues, making it simple to avoid them if so desired. Because they handled it with such class, I bought all ULTRON tie-in issues of regular Marvel books I am currently collecting, despite NOT buying the Ultron miniseries event itself. For the record, the ones I bought were pretty well-done.

So, I hit the CBS today. I dropped Justice League because, really-- who gives a crap about this version? And He-Man because I don't care for the upcoming costume changes and bringing in the Fauxty2-DCU to the series.

So I didn't quite totally ditch DC entirely yet, but I'm down to just Aquaman, Stormwatch, Earth 2 and Worlds' FInest, and the final few LSH issues. For me, that's very very few DCs.