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What If DC Were Publishing A Batman/Shadow Comic By Snyder, Orlando And Rossmo, But No One Made A Sound?

1484732951167DC Comics intended to publish their solicitations for April 2017 earlier this week – but then decided to hold off a week. Looks like someone at DC may have jumped the gun. And the info was published as individual listings on ComiXology instead.

Bleeding Cool noticed the existence of a new Batman/Shadow crossover comic series, quite an event combining both classic characters from the nineteen-thirties. The creative team was also stellar, the leading Batman writer in recent years, Scott Snyder, with Midnighter/JLA's Steve Orlando and A-Lister artist Riley Rossmo.

So we reported it.

But very few other people even noted its existence. Nothing on Newsarama, CBR, Comic Vine, IGN, Comic Book, Comics Beat, Comics Alliance, Multiversity – all those people who had been given exclusive looks at DC April solicitations the week before, decided that this story was untouchable. Despite the information being openly available on ComiXology and Kindle – they wouldn't even have to credit Bleeding Cool.

There was mention on The Outhousers and Italian press such as Bad Comics, both referring to Bleeding Cool. But that's it. What that means is that all these other sites are not publishing that information because the publisher doesn't want them to – even though the info is publicly out there.

It's one thing to stick to an embargo, it's another to stick to it when it's already on Amazon. Odds are DC Comics has arranged an exclusive reveal with a big media organisation whose readers probably won't give a toss – and at that point all the sites mentioned above will be finally allowed to report on it. Probably with quotes from Snyder, Orlando and Rossmo in the process, as well as art from the comic and the variant covers, with credit and link to the "official" PR-formed exclusive. And they'll all ignore the fact that the core of the story, at least, will have been out there for ages.

The thing is – it's not that important. It's just the existence of one comic book. In the grand scheme of things, who really cares? The worry is that DC Comics, or other bodies, continue to impose that same control over stories that actually are more important.

I shouldn't complain, we certainly got lots of traffic from everyone else deciding to ignore what they already knew.

UPDATE: Quarter of an hour after we posted this – and an hour after I'd queried it on Twitter, Newsarama ran the story. They said they'd seen the listing on ComiXology. 


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Rich JohnstonAbout Rich Johnston

Founder of Bleeding Cool. The longest-serving digital news reporter in the world, since 1992. Author of The Flying Friar, Holed Up, The Avengefuls, Doctor Who: Room With A Deja Vu, The Many Murders Of Miss Cranbourne, Chase Variant. Lives in South-West London, works from Blacks on Dean Street, shops at Piranha Comics. Father of two. Political cartoonist.
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