brayzie

I take it back, THIS was my first Batman comic.







Good times.

Even though I hadn't seen the Adam West show, I too was a little taken back by the violent nature of the comics. In Year 3, there's a flash back to a midget Joker beating Robin with a crow bar, and the next scene Robin's face is horribly disfigured and he's tied to a chair with a time bomb in the room.

Then Dick Grayson's parents were shown falling from their trapeze act, screaming to their deaths. The villain stabbed some guy in a bar, and then slashed a nuns face.

And this was all in a Code Approved comic.

fumanstan

Somewhat related, but when the Watchmen movie came out it did show up for sale at places like Target. What's kind of cool is that some new Marvel toys that I saw at Target also include an issue Secret Wars that feature those characters.

I'm just a casual reader that buys a trade every now and then, but I think Marvel and DC need and can do better promotional work to tie in their comics with the movies other then a small little display at a book store that few people travel in to. Digital can help, but they need to promote it better. Have the entire story arcs that some of the movies take themes from available, or cheaper digitally that folks can read on their iPad's. Have Bane in the upcoming Dark Knight Rises? Sell Knightfall for $10 digitally.

kgrogers1979

Four new Green Lantern titles announced

http://dcu.blog.dccomics.com/2011/06...en-lantern-1s/

It doesn't seem like Green Lantern is going to be affected much by the reboot, so this gives me hope it may not be as big a deal as I first feared. So long as the rumors of Superman: One More Day and Babs as Batgirl don't come true...

brayzie

So it doesn't sound like much of a reboot anymore if Green Lantern is just carrying on, just with a new #.

kgrogers1979

Yes and no.

The earlier Firestorm solicit says Ronnie is getting de-aged and becoming a high school student. Also the new JLA origin has Cyborg as a founding member instead of Martian Manhunter.

So some things are definitely changing, although hopefully it won't be as much as first thought.

The CoIE reboot was similar in that some characters were drastically changed and others were barely changed. For example, Superman was drastically changed when John Byrne rebooted him. His power was massively toned down, he was never Superboy, and he became the true last survivor of Krypton with Kara and Krypto wiped from existence. However, Batman was barely changed at all. Other than a new origin for Jason Todd there wasn't any significant difference in the Batman comics.

The Valeyard

I feel so old. Everyone's first comics are titles that came out when I was starting college.

My first "Batman" comic:

Laertes

I'm attaching the cover for the new Justice League International. I thought I knew my DC (been reading since I was 6 and since we're all sharing--which is cool--my first comic, that I remember, was an old cheap Superman Family I found in a used bookstore. Supergirl was on the cover. I should try and find it). Can you help me? Is that Donna in the bottom left corner? And who is that between Fire and Booster's arm up in the upper right corner?

Thanks.

Sonny Corinthos

8 Questions About the DCU Reboot.

Shinobi

At first I heard it was Donna. But then I heard it's a completely new character.

That would be August General In Iron. He was part of The Great Ten, the premiere Chinese Superteam in the DC Universe.

http://www.comicvine.com/august-gene...iron/29-41235/

brayzie

That looks pretty cool. I always liked covers like those that piqued your curiosity and wonder, "How did THAT happen? I MUST buy this issue to find out!"

PhantomStranger

An interesting sidebar to your point, something very interesting showed up at Costco in the last couple of days. Marvel has apparently put three issues of Thor, Captain America, and X-Men together in a plastic bag and is selling them at Costco for a total of $3.79. That is the first time I had ever seen anything like that in a Costco, somewhat tucked away in the book section. I was a little disappointed that DC did not think to do anything like that for Green Lantern.

Travis McClain

Two things:

1) I remember finding lots of such 3-issue packages from both Marvel and DC when I first really began reading comics at places like Value City. The DC collections included a cardboard insert that doubled as a sheet of trading cards you could cut out and collect. Naturally, they never came out properly cut and I should have just preserved the sheet as it was. Those assortments of back issues were the first chance I really had to begin getting caught up as a reader and I cannot emphasize enough the role they played in making me feel comfortable and confident exploring these new worlds.

2) I spent last weekend with my wife and her family in Ohio for her grandmother's 90th birthday. We went to breakfast one morning at a Buehler's grocery (they have a diner inside the grocery story) and on our way out I stopped to browse their magazine selection. DC has put out a magazine sized collection of GL stories, with a $9.99 cover price(!). It seems to me that Marvel has definitely bested DC with their approach.

Laertes

Dammit! I should have known that. I read every issue of 52 (probably last set of floppies I bought; oh no wait, i bought Legion of 3 Worlds, because I'm a huge Legion fan).

Thanks for the replies. I will now propose that that's Black Canary in a new costume and no wig. (The blonde hair is the wig and Dinah has dark hair, right? I can't remember. I know Supergirl is blonde and the wig is brown as Linda. My earliest comic book memories, are of me as a wee lad, and Supergirl in back issues of Superman Family when she was in the hot pants look. Yum).

The Valeyard

Marvel's doing the same. I've seen Thor and Captain America magazine/comic reprints at grocery stores in my area.


In other news - Barnes & Nobles nationwide are expanding their comic output.



We'll see how long it lasts.

Travis McClain

That's nice, but it still doesn't expand access to comics to a community like mine. Kids out here have no more access to a B&N than to a LCS. We've got them in Louisville, but not in the adjacent county where I live.

MBoyd

My first Batman comic book after being a fan of the cartoons and 60s series in reruns. It just seemed so brutal and dangerous! Warped my mind!

I was still more of a Marvel fan until around Crisis and post Crisis. And Dark Knight Returns of course.

brayzie

That picture, in my opinion, is what's kind of wrong with DC and Marvel's line.
It's like, holy crap, which Batman comic do I buy? Which is the real one?

I think that's part of the reason why I've always enjoyed picking up comics from the spinner rack in a drug store. You had Batman, Amazing Spider-man, Action Comics, Uncanny X-Men, The Hulk, Punisher, and Wonder Woman. If you picked up Batman, you went home feeling like THIS is the Batman story.

But going to the comic shop, or in this case B&N, the importance of the story seems less substantial because there's 8 different Batman titles there.

Bronkster

At last! My lifelong dream of owning Action Comics #1 is within my reach!

Travis McClain

I agree entirely. I talked about all this with a friend of mine last night, and he's a far more dedicated comics reader than I have ever been. I made the remark that it's one thing to run a 22-part storyline, but it's quite another to run a 22-part storyline across five different titles in the span of three months. It's simply overwhelming and discouraging for new readers.

I love episodic storytelling that rewards readers and viewers who invest themselves. TV shows have demonstrated that most of us prefer to have a sense that things are actually going somewhere, that events of one story have consequences on subsequent stories. I'm on board with ongoing story arcs. Having parallel series is not the problem; having a massive storyline told across those parallel series is a problem.

It's okay for a reader to pick up the current issue and say, "This is apparently part #7 of 22 parts," and then decide if he or she wants to track down the preceding six parts. That reader should not, however, have to buy four other issues that same day.

The other part of this is that what frequently forces publishers to hold these reboots from a creative perspective is that they get so carried away allowing writers to do outrageous things that affect nearly every character owned by that publisher that eventually the writers begin to realize they've painted one another into a corner. If these massive storylines were more judiciously metered out and confined to specific characters and their mythos, there'd be less instance of this kind of stuff.

For instance, it's okay if you kill Superman and bring him back. But why does that have to in turn set Hal Jordan off on becoming Parallax? Let Superman die and come back, and let Hal go crazy if you want, but keep them separate. There's no reason that Superman and Green Lantern need to co-mingle their stories. A writer should be able to tell a multiple part Batman story with Robin without worrying about what Robin is also being shown doing in the pages of a Teen Titans storyline on sale at the same time.

The Star Wars Expanded Universe model is infeasible for something like DC Comics to follow, and yet I keep feeling like that's their template. Each story has to "build on" other stories, which sounds like a reward for loyal readers. But eventually it becomes an unwieldy, impenetrable mess for newcomers. The only way to guard against that kind of mess is to make stories accessible, and someone at the top needs to understand that may mean telling established readers that they're going to have to make do with one or two storylines per principle character, told in one or two ongoing titles. Let Batman readers be able to ignore Detective Comics and vice versa. If Batman and Detective Comics are done well, they'll maintain respectable sales.

Travis McClain

Funny you say this, because last night I actually bought Action Comics #1 at Half Price Books! It was a 1988 reprint, but it's still nice to say.

fujishig

Where did you see this rumor?

The lead in to all this is a crossover called Flashpoint, where the Flash gets lost in another universe where everything is changed, and he and Booster Gold try to fix it. After this concludes, we go back to the "real" DC Earth, but apparently things are still a little screwed up (but not as much as in Flashpoint Earth), thus the differences in universes. It'd be really lame if the concept of this new universe was just an extension of the lead-in mini.

Of course Green Lantern is untouched. First off, Johns writes it, and he's the architect of the new universe. Second, Green Lantern and Batman are the top selling titles DC has, I doubt Batman changes all that much either. But there are significant changes. de-aging Ronnie, Cyborg being more prominent, Captain Atom becoming Dr. Manhatten in some weird case of irony, Hawkman becoming Wolverine, etc.

The kid who gets his first Ipad four months into the reboot can easily buy back issues, and the back issues will actually be cheaper. However, there will have to be a huge marketing push for the comicology app, and I think a change in the interface to make it easier to load/buy. At least the last time I used it, it wasn't great in terms of browsing titles, which is a huge thing As I said before, they give away some comics for free now, and I doubt the downloads even for those are that significant.

edited to add: I guess those reports of the bigger B&N comic sections are true, and probably timed to coincide with the don't-call-it-a-reboot, which makes sense, and allays the concerns about people being confused by different bat books, etc. Still, how long before that section is trashed like the manga section usually is? Which I guess is ok if new fans are actually reading it, but at some point they have to actually be buying it to make a difference, right? Which brings me to something else I actually always wondered... how many people actually buy magazines from bookstores these days at cover price? They have such a wide selection, I guess there are impulse buys, but I'd think the majority of them are returned to the publishers.

kgrogers1979

This is just a rumor so far, but this is supposedly the cover to Batman #1.



WTF is up with Riddler's hair? Its like a mohawk shaped into a question mark. I know DC is trying to be younger and hipper, but that is just plain retarded.

Also is that Pyg on the left? It looks like it may be, so perhaps Morrison's work won't be retconned and there won't be too much rebooting in the Batverse. Other than Riddler's stupid haircut.

slop101

Looks like Batman's getting a boner from beating people up.

Travis McClain

I'm hardly a well-informed reader these days, but it seems like DC themselves have implied this with their "don't call it a reboot" statement. If this is supposed to stop short of being a reboot, then it stands to reason that more things are staying the same than changing.

That kid can still at best only have access to whatever back issues exist as digital comics, though. Also, I was trying to raise the question of how the digital comic model makes younger readers conscious of comics. To even find them you do sort of have to know to go looking for them, or at the very least buy e-books from a retailer who allocates promotional space on their site for digital comics.

Regarding back issue prices, that's a variable. Since I got back into reading in the last year or so I've managed to find most of what I want at less than cover price by being patient and selective, and willing to thumb through the quarter boxes. Just yesterday I picked up Action Comics #901, the current issue, for $1.22. (And yes, I realize that buying the current issue used means I have actively cheapened the new issue sales upon which DC relies. It's the first such current issue I've bought this way.)

There's still nothing comparable to the drugstore spindle. Yes, the selection was meager, the only back issues were last month's lingerers that hadn't been removed, etc. But consider all the kids whose parents don't frequent a national chain bookseller like B&N, or don't even have such a bookseller in their community. Let's face it: parents don't promote reading because they're not much on reading, themselves. Exposure to print--regardless of medium--is dwindling and it's not because kids won't read. It's because parents aren't asking them to read, or even cultivating an environment in which kids even think of reading as anything more than an obnoxious part of school.

By relying on B&N as its mass retailer, the comics industry is still only preaching to the converted.

Travis McClain

Incidentally, Ty Templeton just responded to a post of mine on his blog about this very subject. I really do recommend taking a look at the initial post, which is a cartoon satirizing DC's 52 #1s scheme, but for the lazy here are his remarks about the subject of comic sales. My apologies for the large block of text, but that's exactly how he posted it, and I'm not about to take it upon myself to edit the guy.