Hellblazer bites the dust

[Ancient Otter]

Me, I know it's only comics, like, but that kind of office culture would have me chucking some cunt out a window if I was working there.

Ha, I had a great mental image of the 2000AD editorial office being like The Thick of It.

[PreacherCain]

Not sure why they didn't just kill of the character altogether. Would have caused quite a shock and probably garnered a lot of press attention. Maybe Milligan will do just that in his final issue, who knows.

It would be great if DC/Vertigo (RIP) started doing proper, numbered omnibus collections of Hellblazer and just go through the entire run. Vertigo are usually pretty good at this with every other series they've published; not sure why Constantine didn't get the same level of care but the collections over the years have always been patchy and unfinished.

[I, Cosh]

It would be great if DC/Vertigo (RIP) started doing proper, numbered omnibus collections of Hellblazer and just go through the entire run. Vertigo are usually pretty good at this with every other series they've published; not sure why Constantine didn't get the same level of care but the collections over the years have always been patchy and unfinished.

As it happens, I was in FP this very evening and number 4 has just been released.

If Vertigo goes I don't see anywhere else in DC for stuff like Scalped or Northlanders. Which is a shame.

[PreacherCain]

It would be great if DC/Vertigo (RIP) started doing proper, numbered omnibus collections of Hellblazer and just go through the entire run. Vertigo are usually pretty good at this with every other series they've published; not sure why Constantine didn't get the same level of care but the collections over the years have always been patchy and unfinished.

As it happens, I was in FP this very evening and number 4 has just been released.

If Vertigo goes I don't see anywhere else in DC for stuff like Scalped or Northlanders. Which is a shame.

Ah, I stand corrected. Bit late really, they should have done this ten years ago, might have had more people picking up the monthly had they chosen to run a more consistent trade collection. Seems to work well enough for Image. Though not so much for Fables, so who knows!

As for stuff like Scalped and Northlanders, it seems like even Vertigo haven't been able to get new ongoing series up and running over the last few years. Not to mention that a lot of those creators don't seem very interested in working for DC Entertainment anymore. I guess the bigger names will go for Image now that they have some page rate deals, while folks like Dark Horse (are they fucked now if they lose Star Wars?!), Avatar, Dynamite, IDW etc. seem to be able to get a few decent names to work with them too.

[Montynero]

Professor Byah: I understand the wisdom of your point of view. I'm just optimistic. Sure, optimism often proves unfounded, but that's all part of taking a sunny outlook. It seems to me that many of the truly great comics in history are created through the sheer bloodymindedness and inspiration of a couple of people. They just decide, against all the odds and prevailing wisdom, to make something wonderful. That's the magic of comics.

[Professor Bear]

If you want to be optimistic, DCs owners are going through a massive internal power struggle at the minute and part of the argument is the state of DC and why, with all of AOL Time Warner's resources at their disposal and two decades' worth of a head start on a company that owned Spider-Man and X-Men and still went bankrupt, DC aren't where Marvel are right now.  I know we don't rate our little hobby too highly on the scale of importance, but moneymen are not unreasonably asking why Marvel has gone from being worth less than nothing to worth 4 billion dollars in the space of ten years, while the guys who own Superman and Batman are in still the red - that DC is such a car-wreck has become a genuine point of concern and things will either get a hell of a lot worse after the dust settles from the Bruce Rosenblum/Kevin Tsujihara/Jeff Robinov power struggle at the top of WB, or they'll get a hell of a lot better.

[Jim_Campbell]

Interesting snippet buried in this Brian Wood Star Wars interview: DC are actively spiking attempts to get Vertigo titles made into TV series. Wood claims that an AMC-produced version of DMZ was nixed from on-high.

Kinda defeats the point of taking your "creator-owned" book to Vertigo if your own publishers are going to torpedo any chance of a Walking Dead-style jackpot, doesn't it?

Cheers

Jim

[Professor Bear]

A cynical man might almost suggest they were trying to devalue the Vertigo brand as a multimedia concern for some crazy reason, but that would be silly.
Say, does anyone remember Marvel's post-bankruptcy years when those counting the beans decided to fire the guy who'd run the company into the ground because he was making more or less the same mistakes as always whilst also alienating talent and causing an exodus to the company's biggest rival, so they appointed someone from Marvel's most successful imprint to run the main company because of that person's proven track record of success, talent management, and ability to produce high-profile books that raised that company's profile?

And Karen Berger was just run out of town, you say?

[Colin YNWA]

It'd be really interesting to hear the other side of the coin there and the reasoning behind that. From the outside, without all the facts it appears a crazy and counter intuitive decision.

With DC apparently kicking Gail Simone off Batgirl (and one assumes out this point out the door too?), again without both sides the story mind, those that didn't realise or appreciate what Paul Levitz did at DC, for all his conservatism, must surely be regretting his departure more and more.

[Professor Bear]

It'd be really interesting to hear the other side of the coin there and the reasoning behind that. From the outside, without all the facts it appears a crazy and counter intuitive decision.

The current DC administration is obsessed with making employees and freelancers alike sign NDAs, so we won't be hearing a truly inside take on events anytime soon, which will, I imagine, prompt conspiracy theories like mine to continue to appear*, fuelled by things like Wood's departure from DC and their shrinking creative roster.

With DC apparently kicking Gail Simone off Batgirl (and one assumes out this point out the door too?)

I gave up on trying to discern DC's plans for Batgirl around the time they cancelled the book - despite it outselling Wonder Woman - and folded the main character into the lower-selling Robin title as a villain.
All the same, ditching Simone seems bonkers as she's one of the few writers at DC to have both critical and fan support.




* In defence of that theory, though, the guy who ran Marvel into bankruptcy as EiC is the current EiC of DC comics.  Spoooooooky.

[PreacherCain]

I seem to remember something about WB not being happy with the older Vertigo contracts because it gave the creators more control of media rights for film and television adaptations and would allow for them to take that property outside of WB. Meaning WB wouldn't make any money from any adaptation if the creator wanted to go with, say, Disney or someone like that.

WB are in the comics business for the intellectual property rights. They're not overly concerned if the comic is good or bad, it just needs to be open to expansion into other, more profitable, mediums.

[Jim_Campbell]

Pretty much everything about Vertigo we've been chewing over here consolidated into one thoroughly depressing read.

Cheers

Jim

[Link Prime]

Pretty much everything about Vertigo we've been chewing over here consolidated into one thoroughly depressing read.

Cheers

Jim

Good read Jim, thanks.

[Jim_Campbell]

Bizarrely, on the same day that I made my last post on this thread, this article appeared and seems to have gone largely unnoticed (by me, at any rate). At this point, it's hard to know what it means but separating Vertigo from the direct management of Bob Harras may prove to be a good sign...

[Colin YNWA]

At the end of the day it all goes up through Jim and Dan so you do wonder how much will really change?

A more negative take on it might also be that Vertigo is now seen as the added extra onto some senior executive's portfolio, the thing they don't quite know what to do with.

The positive take it that since he's improved digital and (apparently) maybe he's seen as a man who can grow the brand back given autonomy and revitalise it.

The neutral take (well kinda) is that aligning Vertigo with the digital arm means they might be trying more innovative ways of getting its product out there as DC see that being where Vertigo's market is shifting to.

So in other words 'I dunno nowt me.'