I've learned a lesson with this two part post thing. Don't do it. There are so many other things I have wanted to write about but I had the second part of the comics thing I was doing earlier to write, which I'm going to write now just to get it out of the way, and because it's awesome.
So when you last read I was telling you about how basically comics had turned to movies as a way of getting out of bankruptcy and in so doing had made majors companies who cared lots and lots of money, which caused them to take notice and buy those comic book companies. Marvel is now owned by Disney, and DC has been owned by Warner Brothers since sometime in the sixties.
It seems like the major change over of major corporate owership happened in about Steptember of 2011 when DC relaunched everything. I used to have this crazy dream of writing Action Comics 1000, which I thought was do able since it was somewhere around 877, near 8 years away, I thought that was enough time to become successful, but that dream was shattered when they decided that history didn't matter, that large numbers scare away new readers, and that 1 was a friendly inviting number, so they rebooted everything with a big old 1 on it. It's cool, who needs goals and achievements to motivate them anyway? DC is now for the most part like season 4 of Community, sort of like what you loved before but it's as if the whole thing is being acted out by people who don't really know what they are talking about. There are people who get the characters and then there are people who run things, right now it's in the control of the people who run things. A lot of people are leaving/ have left because 30 year vets of writing don't like being told they don't get the character because they wrote him in a seated position for a panel. "Batman never sits down, and Jesus never poops. Everyone knows that!"
So what are the people who run things running this thing towards? Market testing for one. When DC relaunched they had 52 titles some of which I had no idea why they existed, there was no demand for an I Vampire book, that I knew of anyway, there was no reason for a Justice League Dark, or a Grifter series or Red Lanterns. Not that these were all bad books, but they were inexplicable at the time they came out. Come to find out thought that they would like to make Justice League Dark into a movie, that right after a flash animated film comes out showing off how freaking cinematic his powers are, there are now plans for a Flash film leading up a Justice League movie. Before the model was this, the publisher put out a bunch of comics over years and every now and again there was one that was really inspired, and years later it was adapted into a film, and in this way good comics made some hit and miss movies. Now they are trying to drum up interest with the comics themselves as part of an already existing movie property which they plan to make into a thing that people are going to love. This is a terrible plan, but it's not like it can't work.
The public likes what it likes, you can't control what people see at the box office. as much as you try. Right now the philosophy in Hollywood is big investment makes you big money back, so they budgets of films have become cartoonishly big in the hopes of making a billion and a half dollars like the Avengers and The Dark Knight did. This is always a bad idea as bigger budgets don't equal better movies, just louder ones, and people get annoyed by loud things. Not all loud things mind you, but movies are like music, they should have ebbs and flows and rhythms to them, if they don't it just becomes noise. Those ebbs and flows are the difference between making a great film like Pacific Rim or a terrible loud one like Transformers or Red 2. So money isn't the key to a big hit, good stories are, and you nearly never get a good story from a corporate plan for a big movie launch, because there can be no art in it. It's inorganic and unnatural, because you are forcing it to be likable instead of actually being likeable, like the nervous kid who wants to be loved too much and is trying too hard people are going to hate you. So DC is kinda terrible right now, which is really too bad because I like there characters a lot. It's like watching one of your friends put on a lot of weight and get into WWE wrestling on TBS hardcord, they think it's awesome but you want them to get there old job back and shower.
Marvel on the other hand seems to be on a simliar but more stable course. They just seem to want books out which are good, they even allow there artists to experiment and create new things on books like Young Avengers and Hawkeye, which are some of the better books on the market right now. Yes they are synergizing a bit but not in a way which I seem to notice at least. Maybe this is a failure on there part but I think it's a success because their stories are still readable. unlike this blog which is becoming increasingly inside baseball.
Just so you know this is the point where I am tired of talking about this and want to switch over to something new. I really want to write a review of Wolverine, or talk about how awesome my socks are, you know amazing things.
Check back next time when I pick a more readable subject I promise.
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