Posted in: Comics, Look! It Moves! by Adi Tantimedh, Recent Updates | Tagged: Comics, dc

Look! It Moves! by Adi Tantimedh #115: The DC Comics Pilot Season

Published Mon, 12 Sep 2011 17:00:40 -0500

So DC's reboot has kicked off with the first batch of first issues, hitting the shops with plenty of promotional hype and media coverage. Just about every comics site, including Bleeding Cool, has been reviewing and assessing the new books, which gets them hits and in turn generates reader interest in the books themselves in a beneficial circular process. As far as dominating the month's comics industry news cycle goes, DC has accomplished that goal admirably. But then with the money and sheer size of parent company Warner Brothers' PR department behind it, it would have been remiss if it hadn't.

There's a lot riding on this revamp: the future of the mainstream, ie superhero, comics industry, the comics market, the future of DC Comics, probably a few jobs, and most important of all, the viability of DC's library of characters and stories as an Intellectual Property Portfolio from which future successful movies and TV properties might be derived.

Having looked at all the NuDC first issues that have come out so far, the most striking aspect I found has been the sense of corporate uniformity they all shared, and that may not be a good thing. DC seems to be taking a TV pilot season approach where every first issue is the equivalent of the first act of a pilot episode rather tan a complete one. I don't know if there was an editorial mandate issued across the board for all the 52 books, but they all follow the same pacing and rhythm in their plotting.

It doesn't matter whether the book is JLA, ACTION COMICS, ANIMAL MAN or HAWK AND DOVE, and whether you liked the stories or not, all 14 launch titles told their stories the same way: introduce the main character, have at least one big action setpiece, introduce the supporting cast, first hint of a plot, the villain of the day, then end on a cliffhanger. Never mind the variations in plot detail or characterization, every NuDC Book has had that same plot, and I have a feeling the rest of the 52 will too. By that standard, every NuDC Number One is the first act of every TV show, with the character intro, the first plot beat and then the first stinger or cliffhanger before the first ad-break, except in this case, the break is a month before the second act comes long, and you have to pay for that next act, and the ones after that.

If you read reprints of comics from the Sixties, you'll find that Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko and other artists Stan worked with were experts at telling a complete story, with a beginning, middle and end in just 17 pages. By the 70s, Marvel had mastered the structure of telling a story with a complete A-Plot while sustaining subplots, long-running character arcs and longer arcs to be resolved at a later date, and to this day still follows that structure in their books. By then, all the way to the early 90s, DC was following that paradigm too.

The late 90s has seen a dilution or slowing-down of plots in single issues where the A-Plot would be set up and then stretched out over the next two, maybe four or even six issues, and story-density has gone down in mainstream comics ever since. The NuDC titles seem to be the pinnacle of this newer, less dense narrative model, as if it had been fully absorbed into the editorial policy. In the 70s or even the early 90s, these would have been the first 10 pages of story instead of the whole 22. I couldn't help wondering if there was some desperation in their insisting on the same plot for all the books, as if they were afraid the readers wouldn't come back if the first issue didn't end on a cliffhanger. Maybe most comics do that most of the time, but it becomes glaring when every first issue coming out in a single month from on company is doing the exact same thing, as that threatens to become generic, lacking in spontaneity and gives off the smell of the generic and the clichéd. You'd think they might have thought to mix things up a little.

Given that these comics cost $3.99 or $2.99 (more if you're paying in pounds sterling, which amounts to an import price), that's terrible value for money for the small amount of story that's in the average 22-page comic these days that takes anywhere between 30 seconds and 2 minutes to read. When you compare that price point to the similar price that magazines like PEOPLE or THE NEW YORKER or VANITY FAIR, it comes up short as it would take days to read through each of those magazines. Hell, it takes longer to read through the articles in a single issue of PLAYBOY than it would take to read all 14 of the first NuDCU titles published so far.

I suppose you could argue that Marvel and DC cater to a different market than the magazine market, that the hardcore superhero fans are willing to pay a premium for their monthly dose of escapist fan service soap opera, but the declining sales figures of both Marvel and DC titles might contradict that. The NuDCU titles are riding high on a wave of hype and excitement right now. It's good that there were 200,000 preorders for the first issue of NuJLA, especially when no DC or Marvel book managed to break 80,000 copies back in July, but what are the sales going to be like in six or twelve months when the hype and novelty wear off, when the books no longer have that "new spandex" smell and curious, casual readers have dropped off? What's Plan B? Does DC have a Plan B?

Starting at number one again at lookitmoves@gmail.com

Follow the official LOOK! IT MOVES! twitter feed for thoughts and snark on media and pop culture,
stuff for future columns and stuff I may never spend a whole column writing about.

Look! It Moves! © Adisakdi Tantimedh

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!