| Posted: 26 June 2009 at 12:00pm | IP Logged | 6
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Just to be clear, I'm not endorsing what Marvel has been and is currently doing with their line of comic books. I'm as disheartened by any fan of the medium over the insane decisions made by both Marvel and DC over the years, decisions I can see hurting their characters in a way Disney would never dream of doing. Sure, both companies seem to be doing well in the short term with their various enterprises outside of comic book publishing, but I think it's a pretty short sighted vision. That said, what I'm doing is being realistic. The publishing end of both companies just isn't that important to them. It's R&D. It's keeping something out there for fans of the characters to fill the gap between movies. Occasionally we'll get some truly inspired series or story from the Big Two, but those tend to be few and far between. The companies have abandoned a broad market, have closed off widespread distribution avenues, have even gone so far as to say that not only weren't they going to market their comics to kids, but that they don't read them any more so why even try. Instead of firing that guy on the spot, they've embraced that idea for all but a very few low selling books aimed only at kids. What happens? Many fans eat that up and ask for more, so I don't really see an incentive for the kind of sea change needed by both companies.
I may be able to give Marvel some slack, if only ever so slight, but DC is an arm of Warner Brothers. Has been for 30 years. They have characters that they've protected for decades; Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Daffy, Taz...the list goes on and on. With the exception of a few off-model experiments that haven't gone anywhere, they've been second only to Disney in maintaining the integrity of the WB stable of characters. But they can't seem to do that with their DC characters at all. In fact, they really crap all over them to the point that many of them are totally unrecognizable. The excuse may be that to a large majority of people, those that don't read the comics, Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and even Aquaman are instantly recognizable as characters used in media outside of comic books, so at the end of the day that's all that really matters. It's sad to us that we can't recognize them in the medium in which they first came to life, but that medium, if not dying, is really hurting right now and, as a consequence of the multi-millions of dollars in revenue generated by a single film, of little to no concern in the grand scheme of things.
So while I agree wholeheartedly with the notion that it would be great for both Marvel and DC to be as protective of their properties in all media at least as much as the WB is of their classic characters (Disney is on a whole 'nuther planet in this regard), I just don't see why they'd ever want to do it. Certainly one big selling comic by Claremont isn't going to create a sea change of this magnitude.
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