Drunken Comics Rage

Well, at least the man has a sense of humor about himself. I'll give him that. As mentioned yesterday, I attended a couple of honest to goodness DC and Marvel panels in San Diego. I can't say that any of the panels were so incredible as to be worth the trip to San Diego for them alone, but there was a distinct contrast in the panels.

Truth be told, I never actually sat through an entire DC panel. I attempted to twice. Just couldn't do it. You sort of go into these things expecting maybe one or two announcements and then a whole bunch of nothing.  But the DC panel actually said less than nothing.

The first panel was a DC Countdown panel (I just had to see the madness for myself). The entire panel involved every question about what is going on in the book being addressed with "keep reading" or "you'll need to read this other tie-in to get that story".  Are they really fucking serious? 52 books of a weekly series and they still want you to buy "Countdown to Adventure", "Countdown to Mystery", "Countdown to Bankruptcy", etc. to understand everything? Sometimes they were laughing as they said it, but I somehow think they were still serious.

In both panels I attended, Didio stood at the podium running the show. By and large he dominates most of the conversation, so it was hard to tell whether anyone else even had a personality. Grant Morrison and Bill Willingham are the only folks who really managed to speak at any length and came across as fairly entertaining. But by and large it was Didio catering to the Fanboys.

Example: Someone in a panel got up and asked a question about why Marvel seemed to have a pretty easy time with getting their properties turned into films, but DC hasn't had much success yet. Now while there are a myriad of legitmate answers to this question without getting into details about how jacked up the licensing rights for most of their properties are at the moment. But Didio didn't go that route. This is almost a direct quote from him. "Um, we don't have anything to do with that, but lets ask the panel what DC property they would want to see made into a movie!"

Is that even an answer? I don't think so. But what was of interest was the rather huge pop each title named by a panelist got from the crowd when they said what they would like to see. Also of interest was the fact that the guy asking the question got booed by the crowd just for mentioning Marvel.

And it occured to me all at once. I discovered what Didio's "deal" was and how that correlated to their current fanbase. Didio is a fanboy who landed the dream job. And he's running with it as much as he can. The hell with letting the writers and creative people make the creative decisions. He's the Editor-in-Chief dammit! He'll pull all the strings! I can't even really say I'm just making that up, because there were several questions asked to the panel that they actually deferred to Didio because they said he was the one making the calls on the story. Does that even makes sense to anyone?

But here's the thing. The hardcore DC Fanboys? They love this shit. They absolutely ate up the all the cryptic answers about Countdown and the little "What movie do you want to see made" nerdfest. Who gives a fuck that practically every book in the DC line is so steeped in DC lore as to be completely incomprehensible to the casual reader. They understand it and that's all that matters. And they love Dan Didio for it. To quote Warren Ellis, THIS IS WHAT THEY WANT!!!

Too bad "they" apparently only account for about 25% of the market share currently.

Enough with that. On to this weeks reading list.

1. Green Arrow: Year One #2
2. All Star Batman #6
3. Batman #666
4. Thor #2
5. Immortal Iron Fist #7
6. Mighty Avengers #4
7. World War Hulk #3
8. Illuminati #4

It's also worth noting that at the Con last week I bought Black Summer #1 and Doktor Sleepless #1 both by Warren Ellis and Chronicles of Wormwood #6. All of which were really good. Ellis continues to produce some great work and Ennis is just a twisted (and talented) human being.

Tonight's wine selection is a Rex Goliath Shiraz. The label and their website mention a 47 pound rooster. Insert your own joke about the wine with the large cock here.

Filed under: Comic-Con, DC Comics, DVO Reading Rage