Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Comics, dc, dc comics, entertainment, marvel, Marvel Comics

Daffy Duck Explains The Problem With Reboots

Okay, so we gave David Gabriel a bit of a roughing up yesterday. Just a bit. So now how about a bit of balance?

So DC Rebirth is coming. It appears that it will be a partial reboot/relaunch rather than what Gabriel likes to call a "refresh". The problem is… well, let's let Daffy Duck explain.

I understand this allegory has been made internally at Marvel to staff as to why they won't be rebooting Marvel continuity.

You only really get to do this once in living memory. The distance between Crisis and the New 52 was twenty-five years. We are not quite five years from that.

Reboots, relaunches, even refreshes, get a bump in sales. But there are diminishing returns. The resultant sales a few months in have a tendency to fall further down. You give long-term readers a reason to leave and or try new product so they helped them break habits and gave them reasons not to go back into stores.

Especially since, with DC Rebirth, it's still the same folk behind the last one. When Marvel did the closest thing they ever actually did to a reboot, rolling from book it book, it was with the new post-bankruptcy team that had been hired. They also grabbed key folk from DC Comics, such as Vertigo's Axel Alonso to sure up where they were lacking.

And when DC Comics reorganised themselves, the used a previous Marvel EIC, one of the founders of Image Comics, and nabbed talent like David Finch and Greg Capullo away from Marvel (he had left Haunt and had an offer for Wolverine and Avengers Vs X-Men).

This time, however, no such attempt has been made. I understand senior folk like Dan Buckley, David Gabriel or Joe Quesada have not even been approached to jump ship.

They might even be open to the possibility. Even market share maniacs like Marvel realise that if there comes a point where if Marvel is the only game in town, that won't be healthy for anyone. Maybe it's time to pull this old memo out from the bottom drawers?

Marvel have also lost a number of key creators to creator owned titles of late. Is there anything DC Comics could do that might attract the likes of Mark Millar, Kieron Gillen, Matt Fraction, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Brian K Vaughan?

Dan DiDio has been hinting at something big. Really big. It will have to be, it can't just be a new JSA, bi-monthly lead books and shuffling the chairs on the Titanic as CBR suggests. Whether a reboot, a relaunch, or a refresh – which sounds more like a feminine hygiene project the more I say it, it will have to knock people's socks off – and then keep them knocked off. If I were Obama, I'd be worried.

https://twitter.com/dandidio1/status/698569011055820800

Because, thinking about it, Daffy did manage it a few times. Somehow. After all, comic books are nown for folk coming back from the dead.

But Joe Alasky died last week. And that ain't happening there…

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