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DC Comics omnibus thread


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I am firmly in wait and see mode.

I have an extra set of biases when it coms to this. Brett Booth is the artist who specifically name dropped me in an interview about Wally once. So I am going to give it a chance.

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See, the problem with a general boycott is that they're still publishing some REALLY good books...and those tend to be the ones most tonally different from the KEWL 90S style of the New 52. Snyder's Batman is absolutely amazing and Superman Unchained has been really strong too. Simone's Batgirl is mostly strong and Batwoman under Andreyko sounds fantastic too (I tradewait most stuff, so I haven't checked it yet). There's some really strong lower end stuff like The Movement too and there WAS Demon Knights until there wasn't. And hell, the new Harley series has been a LOT of fun so far.

I dunno. Boycotting everything just tells DC you're not part of their market anymore. It's a vote of no-confidence, sure. But it doesn't say anything to them about what they SHOULD be doing and ultimately they're just going to shrug and focus on the people who ARE reading their stuff. And maybe it's just me (and given that I've kind of outgrown caring about which fictional timeline is the REAL fictional timeline, that's possible) but I care way more about quality of books than anything else. My problem with the New 52 isn't that a bunch of stuff 'didn't happen'. I can still read that stuff. Just like I could have with Pre-Crisis stuff. Whatever. The problem is that a lot of the books were empty or vapid or samey or just plain sucked. And that an overwhelming lack of diversity sprung up around the line (though credit for the first lineup having a good range of titles).

So I buy the books that have a Vertigo flair. I buy the stuff that gets a lot of creator freedom and gives them a long run. I buy the stuff that I want DC to make in the hopes that it tells them to make more of it. And I get rewarded by reading some legitimately great books...win-win.

All boycotting does is tell DC you're not part of their fanbase and take money away from creators you like doing books you might enjoy. Voting with your dollars is the best way to tell any company what works.

 

And if you're just pirating the books you WOULD have bought to avoid giving DC a dollar, I hope you get scurvy.

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I dunno. Boycotting everything just tells DC you're not part of their market anymore. It's a vote of no-confidence, sure. But it doesn't say anything to them about what they SHOULD be doing and ultimately they're just going to shrug and focus on the people who ARE reading their stuff.

 

Not to completely discount everything you just said, but wasn't one of the main stated reasons for the complete reboot to try and lure back former readers?

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In theory. They've since stated that they're mostly just targeting young males. And frankly, their manner shows a pretty obvious disregard for people who don't like what they're doing/boycott them on principle. And that the number of new readers still outweighs the value of the older readers, which I could believe on the core books at least...their top 10 has stayed stronger than it was pre-52 from what I've seen. Stunts and crossovers and whatever sure, but that's always been the game. And again...the vocal internet audience is either really small or doesn't contribute dollars, as evidenced by every internet darling title that sells like absolute shit.

I'm not saying every DC fan should buy ALL THE NEW 52 TITLES FOREVAH. There's a lot of garbage I've skimmed/passed on. Or even read, way back when I was a retailer and could do that. But to pass on legitimately terrific titles because of a general boycott is baby-with-the-bathwater stuff. End of the day, it means you're treating Snyder's Batman on par with Lobdell's Superman. Which means DC has no way to tell which direction is a better one to follow business-wise.

 

If EVERYTHING they're publishing were terrible, it'd be a very different story. But there's a lot of great stuff in there, so it's not.

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All boycotting does is tell DC you're not part of their fanbase and take money away from creators you like doing books you might enjoy. Voting with your dollars is the best way to tell any company what works.

 

 

See, I feel pretty strongly that DC told *me* I'm not part of their fanbase anymore.  And that's not a New52 thing, that's something that had gone on for a few years before.  It's not just a matter of "Wally/Donna/Ted/etc. are gone", it's the general feeling I get that they don't want anything to do with the attitude of warmth and fun that made me such a huge fan of things like the Waid Flash and the postboot LSH and the Ordway Captain Marvel and the Kesel/Kelly/Faerber progression on Superboy.  I think I pretty much gave up after the Villains for Hire one-shot, even though I kept buying Flash and a couple of Batbooks up until the reboot.  I made a brief try, after an initial boycott plan, to get into a few of the better-liked N52 books like Animal Man or Flash, but I just didn't care.  They'd burned out what emotional attachment I had left to the characters and the universe, and they hadn't replaced it with anything that I could cleave to when there were so many choices that didn't involve pissing me off.

 

As for 'voting with my dollars to tell a company what works' that's exactly what I'm doing.  I'm taking my limited comics budget, and giving it to Marvel and Valiant and Image and IDW because they're the ones giving me what I want from them.

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Exactly.

As i wrote at the time on The Beat, "a great jumping on point" is also a great jumping OFF point.

My disdain for the hyperviolence at DC started during the Johns ascendency really said their product was not for me anymore.

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I dunno. Boycotting everything just tells DC you're not part of their market anymore. It's a vote of no-confidence, sure. But it doesn't say anything to them about what they SHOULD be doing and ultimately they're just going to shrug and focus on the people who ARE reading their stuff. 

 

Except DC has a history of NEVER focussing on the people who are reading their stuff. Their primary concern and who they cater to the most ARE the people who aren't reading. That's why they brought back Barry, Hal, and Kara. They shitcanned the characters who replaced them to try and bring back people who hadn't read since the 80s. Nu52 was a cut-off point for a lot of people because it was DC specifically saying "Fuck you. You're always going to be there. We're doing this because we want new cooler people who aren't you and you won't leave."  Since DC stopped giving a shit about me as a reader, I stopped giving a shit about them as a publisher.

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My original plan was to staight up boycott DC with the New 52. But then... there were certain projects that made me at least check some stuff. I read Swamp Thing through Rotworld, ditto Animal Man. I'm one of the people that isn't a fan of Snyder on Batman because he likes dangling carrots that end up not paying off and I think I'm the only person that was buying World's Finest simply because I'm a huge fan of Power Girl and have been since the original run of Infinity Inc. As of now the only book I still read is Wonder Woman. Just Wonder Woman, because it really is that much fun. The rest... I just don't care anymore.

 

I'll pick and choose from both companies these days.  I think the only thing I consistently buy that is a comic book is when a new Atomic Robo mini comes out and I'll wait for trade on the new Sandman series. Marvel has my money for at least 4 issues of Iron Fist.

 

James

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Between going to Barnes and Noble and the library or flipping through stuff at the lcs, i can read anything of which i might be curious without giving DC any of my money. The only thing i would be buying now is Batman 66, but i can support Parker on his other projects.

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Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying "YESSSS BUY DC FOREVER". If they're not doing anything you want to read, then by all means don't. I'm just REALLY sick of the vocal boycotting both because a company-wide boycott as a rule doesn't help and because it's seriously been two years or more at this point and consistently making a point of mentioning you're boycotting something on a forum that as far as we know, nobody from the company visits is getting weirdly masturbatory.

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To be perfectly honest, I bought the first hardcover of the nu52 Batman, Inc and will probably eventually buy the second one.

 

Thus far, that is the only money I have spent on the nu52.  But, hey, I also personally informed Dan Didio that I was out, so it's not like I only did it on a message board that DC doesn't know exists.

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Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying "YESSSS BUY DC FOREVER". If they're not doing anything you want to read, then by all means don't. I'm just REALLY sick of the vocal boycotting both because a company-wide boycott as a rule doesn't help and because it's seriously been two years or more at this point and consistently making a point of mentioning you're boycotting something on a forum that as far as we know, nobody from the company visits is getting weirdly masturbatory.

 

I honestly don't care, even if they put out out books that get good reviews.

There's a limit at how much time and money I can spend on comic books anyways and Marvel, Image, Dark Horse etc. are all firing on all cylinders, so I can survive pretty well without them.

I don't want to support a shitty company, period. And no, I don't pirate their books either. I don't read them in any way, shape or form.

Call me, when they bring back the old universe, then I might reconsider. Until then, I don't give a shit.

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i gave the first 3 issues of the new 52 a shot. I came back for the 0 issues to give things another shot. I used to read the whole line. I miss the damn thing. There's really nothing for me though. I'm not boycotting them due to any decision they made, on some philosophical level. I'm boycotting them because most of the comics are pretty damn terrible month in and month out and the comics are bad for some of those philosophical things. At this point I wouldn't read them for free.

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Read, Fables: March of the Wooden Soldiers, Fables: The Mean Seasons, & Fables: Homelands. March of the Wooden Soldiers was well built, gave some solid back-story on Boy Blue, and saw many a characters get some really cool moments. My favorite thing though is just how deep into things it showed Bigby to really be. The man really is the police, FBI, CIA, and NSA all wrapped into one package for Fabletown. The Mean Seasons did well focusing on Fabletown's transition to new power with Prince Charming coming into power and Bigby and Snow White leaving. Loved the Cinderella story pushing more of Bigby's spymaster traits and the WWII story for Bigby was good fun. The murder mystery at the end was an interesting surprise, sort of depressing too with the revelation made. Jack's plot in Hollywood during Homelands was good fun, but what I loved was Boy Blue's travels back to the old lands. He really got show off as major badass you never would have expected for him, and the reveal of the Adversary was fairly interesting. March of the Wooden Solders sort of made it obvious who the Adversary was, but I enjoyed the actually story of how said character became the Adversary. One things these volume managed to impressively pull off though was upping my view of Prince Charming. He was such a lazy ass before and even Boy Blue's past story with Red Riding Hood sort of showed him to be a bit of coward during the finals days fighting the Adversary. Thought it started a bit in the last volume with his murder of Blue beard, these volumes did a fantastic job of showing him to be so much more. He played the sleazy politician so well when running for mayor. He really threw himself into the fight with the Wooden Soldiers being the leader on the front-line. And the very end of the Homelands revealed him to play the spy/intelligence just as well as Bigby. Anyways I loved these three volumes. The stories they told were easily the most interesting and fun yet while Willingham did a fine job building the characters up into something much more than what they first appeared to be. I'm very much looking forward to what comes next.

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