I just read DD’s little message at the end of a recent DC Comics purchase (I’m a couple weeks behind), and I am finally going to have to call bullshit on you, Dan.
Here’s the deal. I understand that Geoff Johns and Dan Didio and, let’s say it, Brad Meltzer, had a great time reading comics when they were kids. They had such a great time, in fact, that they think comics were never better. That’s fine. A lot of comics were really good in the 70s and 80s.
But for God’s sake, would you quit smearing you nostalgia love juice all over my new 21st century comics!?!
Really! I’ve had it. Barry Allen was the Flash for, what, 29 years? He was dead from 1985-2008 and somehow, DC sold in excess of 300 (400 if you count mini-series, spin-offs, and “Impulse”) comics about “The Flash,” whichever Flash it was: Wally West, Bart Allen, and even John Fox.
Didio says in his column that it’s a great feeling when things all come together, but things didn’t come together. He’s like George W. Bush searching for excuses to attack Iraq, “Have they got nukes? Did they fund 9/11.” Except it’s more like “Can I bring back Barry Allen in Infinite Crisis? Can I bring back Barry Allen in 52? How about Final Crisis? It’ll be the last one if I can just have this tiny shred of my childhood back!” There was nothing natural about the return of Barry Allen. It was as ham-fisted as the return of Jason Todd. They just jammed it in because it was convenient to Didio’s vision of what the DC Universe should be.
Granted, I’ve been reading comics since the very early 90s, so my vision of how comics should be is probably a bit more fluid than people who are old enough to have been reading comics since before the X-Men were cool.
Before I get ahead of myself, let me also state that this does not mean Joe Quesada is off the hot seat. While the Marvel Universe status quo changes every year (Super hero registration, Skrull secret wars, Reign bullshit), the character development keeps being dragged back: the retconning of the Magneto/Xorn story, Hawkeye and Mockingbird together again and, of course, Brand New Day.
Somehow Ed Brubaker is immune to this clutch. Under his direction we’ve seen a new Captain America and Daredevil married and turned into an adulterer all while Karen Paige presumably continues to rot. His “Rise and Fall of the Shi’ar Empire” saw major changes for certain X-Characters which continue to develop. Space is, after all, the final frontier in the Marvel Universe since Joe admittedly “Doesn’t get the cosmic shit.”
Grant Morrison also had this power once, except it seems Didio has corrupted him. Nevertheless he gave us Damian, Son of the Bat and the Cyclops/White Queen relationship, so it wasn’t a bad run.
Here’s the deal, guys. There’s a reason the comics from your childhood aren’t the comics of today: the people who wrote those characters exhausted all the possible stories those characters merited when they were fresh and new. That’s why the characters moved on from that particular period in their lives. Frankly, season 6 of “Buffy: The Vampire Slayer” was the last time I really cared about how it affects a character personally to come back from the dead. It’s old hat. We’ve seen it. Find a new plot device.
Listen, fanboys will always whine, but they’ll never stop buying. Don’t ever believe they’re going to stop buying. They need something to whine about. It’s what they crave. It’s how they survive, but if you want new readers, you’re going to have to keep making things interesting. Don’t waste my time with a Thor comic whose only purpose is to make me nostalgic about a Thor comic Walt Simonson made twenty years ago. That doesn’t make me want to buy new comics. It makes me want to drop the new ones and go read the old ones. Rehashing your nostalgia is the fastest way to turn the comicbook industry into the graphic novel industry. Of course, from what I hear, that’s really what you want.
Too Quick to be Fooled by this Bullshit
