Dan DiDio out, Jim Lee takes over. AT&T claims if the current "5G' series / event / whatever it's call doesn't work, they'll shut down DC comics and just make movies and TV shows with the established characters. Is this the beginning of the end for print comics as we know them?
I thought 5G was supposed to cause an apocalypse of password leaking, and people looking at you through your web cam. Or was that a tinfoil hat thing?
When I was a kid, a comic contained one complete story (sometimes more). Occasionally, there would be a two-parter. But you could generally pick up any issue of Superman or whatever and jump right in. Now, every single comic book (at least the ones I've looked at recently) is part of a many-part storyline intended to be collected in a trade paperback down the road. This does not invite new or casual readers. You can't really start at PART 5 OF THE SQUIDPEOPLE SAGA and know what's going on. And if a regular reader misses a couple of months, they either find back issues or wait until there's a place to jump back in. Comics have gotten stupidly expensive and are headed higher. DC is going to $8(!) for some new stuff. $8 for this month's issue or $7 for Disney+? Hmm... I love the art form, but I find myself almost completely uninterested in most of the titles I've read before. I mostly read collections of old stories now. I suspect printed comics will soon die out. Maybe it's time for that...
Not only are they writing towards the trade collection, they stretch 2 issues of story into 6-8 issues. Go back and read the old Superman vs Spider-Man crossover. That'd be 12 issues now.
5G allegedly involves the current heroes aging out of their roles for others to step in. In some cases, it's the sidekicks coming in, like Jon Kent taking over as Superman. In other cases, such as Batman, it's someone from outside the family. Seems an unusual move to me considering that WB has been relying on the classic characters for their movies. But, perhaps the comics themselves don't influence the movie slate in the way that they used to even 5 years ago.
5G sounds a lot like the change Marvel made a few years back, where they put their classic characters aside and introduced cool! new! totally awesome versions. They changed it back after 2 years because sales went into the crapper. I predict huge fail. Batman doesn't get more appealing by being someone other than Bruce Wayne.
I used to read the occasional Superman comic back in the day on a semi regular basis. I read the whole Death of Superman. When rebirth started, I followed it for a while. Then they did another reboot with Jim Gordon as Batman with the yellow outline on the bat symbol, but I just couldn’t keep up for the reason you stated above, too many interconnected stories. So it’s been about four years since I’ve read any comics. I lost interest. Tl;dr version, I want my legacy characters. No bloody A, B, C or D. Give me Clark Kent as Superman and Bruce Wayne as Batman and leave it at that. That being said, I don’t mind the Bat family showing up in movies or comics.
That's the core of the problem. You can age characters out and bring in others to take up the mantle, but you can't do it overnight. It has to be earned. Maybe if the editorial staff had given the writers a year to wrap up their storylines, then another year to lay groundwork for the various transitions, it could have plausibly been done. I kind of like the idea of Peter Parker maturing in his personal life and his superhero life. He handles the bigger threats while passing off the day-to-day street level stuff to Miles. Instead, Peter is suddenly a gazillionaire inventor and is acting out-of-character and there's not much of a mentor relationship with Miles. I probably wouldn't mind a throwback to the old Earth-2 idea of Bruce retiring as Batman, becoming Police Commissioner, and handing the mantle off to Dick or Damian. But the story has to lead us there. With Marvel, it didn't. It just happened I fear that DC is going to do something similar. With the initiative set to hit relatively soon, if they don't do a "Darkseid Kills The Justice League" or "Yet Another Infinite Identity Crisis On Infinite Final Earths" type event, they'll probably do a "Ten Years Later" jump and handle everything in flashbacks, which will almost certainly result in failure. And, then, we come to the alleged threat to end the DC publishing arm......or....maybe before they fold it all in, they bring the classics back in an "event" a few years later. Kinda like the "New Coke" conspiracy.
