Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities Dan DiDio: "We publish comics for 45-year olds"

http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2013/08/quote-of-the-day-we-publish-comics-for-45-year-olds/

Explains Barry Allen, Hal Jordan, Barbara Gordon, etc...

I'll be 44 this month. Must be why I haven't liked what he's done. I'm not old enough yet.

Someone please tell him that 45 year olds are clever enough to notice half the pages are splashes of park benches and the stories move along at a Mary Worthian pace.

45 year old whats?

It appears that this conversation took place before 2010. The NuDCU after that, so I think there might have been a change in management. They are trying to find the best market demographics for their characters (which is why they are experiencing with non-superhero comics).

One of those Ds in his name surely stands for D-bag...

^Sharky FTW! Personally, I think it's the middle D... he's a d-bag to the core!

What's interesting is this explains both why 45 year olds hate their comics and why kids hate their comics too.

Another EPIC FAIL brought to you by DC Comics, home of douchebags and mouth-breathers.

Wow, I can't add anything better than this. LOL!

I'm 43, so I guess I'm part of the target audience that DC hoped to attract when they rolled out the retroboot Legion a few years back. If it wasn't for the return of the original Legion I would never have started collecting comics again after a 20 year hiatus.

I really think they should go back writing comics for teenagers again. Can anyone name a classic comics run that was written for 45 year olds?

If I were 45 I would be offended by this.

I'm not.

TDKR and Watchmen usually hit the top of lists. I don't think those were written for teenagers. (And if you were a teen when those came out, you'd be 40-ish now.)

Which aspects of the current comics are supposed to appeal to 45-year olds?

And why is DC so sure that Kamandi won't appeal to 45-year olds?

Resetting all the characters (Superman, GL, Legion, Flash, etc) to match the versions from 35 years ago?


Pope wanted to do it as an actual kids comic.

Thanks.

Because a future Earth populated by aggressive animals and with no humans in sight would make a good kids comic. Wonderful.

And as noted by many above, using the same "characters" (with the same names anyway) is just not enough to appeal to readers who remember what comics were like decades ago...

But they didn't do that. They rebooted them and trampled on their history. That doesn't appeal to anyone except the current creative team's egos.

That's how it feels to me.

The 'new' classic Hal Jordan is an egotistical ass that almost single-handed ruined the reputation of the Justice League. He's also terribly juvenile and irresponsible, which may fit with Ryan Reynold's portrayal of him, but doesn't seem *at all* like the classic Hal Jordan *I* remember.

The 'new' classic Barry Allen is so naïve and funny-incompetent that the rest of the team makes fun of him, to his face. That's not the pre-Crisis Barry Allen I remember, either.

It almost feels like DC is trying to Marvel-ize their characters, and give them the sorts of feet of clay that have made Peter Parker and Tony Stark work so well, and yet, they had all sorts of new potential Flashes and Green Lanterns banging around, that could be steered in this direction, rather than dredging up long-dead characters and mischaracterizing them according to the 'new gospel.'

Well I'm 41 years old and don't feel targeted at all by the current books. It's been some time now that I no longer get enthusiastic about action scenes, space fights or issue length chase scenes.

Funnily enough, I get hooked by characterisation, good storywriting and a decent mystery (does not have to be of Morning Glories proportions). Currently, the biggest part of my pull list is from the house of Image...

Ahhhhh! So that's the reason I don't like any of what DC puts out these days! THAT EXPLAINS IT. I'll like them again in...*checks calendar*...eleven years! Awesome. I'll just read back issues til then!

I read fewer books now than I have in 30 years. Granted, most of them are still DC, but to be honest half of them are on the chopping block. The only books that are still must reads for me are Young Avengers, Teen Titans and Earth-2. The other 7 or so books are teetering on the edge of my attention, not to mention my enjoyment.

There's no way I could keep my attention, let alone find shelf space, for more than one comics title. That's why I narrowed it down to the Legion years ago after Atari Force got cancelled in the mid 1980's. Now with the last "ever" Legion coming out in a week, I wonder if I should even attempt to give another title a try. The only title I'm would be even remotely interested in would be Nightwing. Anybody know if that's been a good read?

Well, it WAS a good read, at the beginning of the new 52, and then editorial got its fingers into Nightwing's creative pie.

The initial set-up (having Dick own Haley's Circus) provided endless opportunities for story-telling and villain creation, and the story-telling by Kyle Higgins was indeed quite good... and then the circus was blown up during the Batman/Joker cross-over and Dick shipped off to Chicago to chase after the man who shot his parents. And it hasn't been quite the same since. I am not "feeling" Chicago for Nightwing.

The art was also very good initially, by Eddy Barrows. Brett Booth followed, whom I understand some people like and some don't, and after that it went notably downhill (please never let Ryp draw Nightwing ever again).

And god only knows what they are going to do with Dick Grayson next month as Forever Evil begins... apparently Dick is up for some sort of huge change next month. The new direction is clearly editorially-driven, or at least driven in the service of DC's big Forever Evil event, so I am not hopeful.

Maybe it will be just the thing to piss off this 44-year old "Forever-DC" fan enough to leave DC altogether, right before he turns 45.

So I'm too old, then...

Oh, well. Back to saving up for the Matlock Deluxe DVD Collection I guess...