Another New 52 rant...

[hedrap]

I'll try and be brief.

I picked up the trades for Wonder Woman 52, mainly for my daughter whose entering the right age for comics.

This series really does embody everything right and wrong with 52.

The idea for the rework and the costume are great. The pace works well, especially in trade form.

But the execution is just disappointing.

As single comics, it would be unbearable. No conclusions, no real answers, no true momentum outside of the journey/quest.

Then, the overt graphic nature puts me in the position of having to read along with her to omit pages, which defeats the entire selling point of comics - for kids to "read upward" in vocabulary.

And I could overlook both if the payoff was worth it, but it's not. I hope the stories of editors stepping all over the original New 52 are true, because WW has a great setup with the New Gods as the descendents of the Classical gods and they just abort foreshadowing within a handful of panels in two issues. It was such a major, major letdown and made the actual storyline even more generic.

It's such a shame, because you can see how these are the movie storyboards. I can look at this WW and see why Snyder cast the stick model; 52 WW is supposed to be like 24 and tone but not built like an Olympic athlete.

It's all unfortunate. What could have been if it wasn't a massive rush job...

[Random Axe]

WB values branding over product. In their quest to unify both film and publications they forgot everything that used to be magical about the characters and made the obligatory style>substance mistake. I attempted the first issue of Justice League and quit with that. That confirmed EVERYTHING I already feared about their new universe. The ONLY thing I'm willing to try, and I'll be orderding this weekend, is the Curse of Shazam trade. They even had to put the word Curse in the title as if they are ashamed of the big red cheese.

Serious question here: Did this new re-launch actually improve sales in books past the first six months? I can't imagine loyal readers staying with this stuff much past that and I certainly don't see new readership being sucked in. Just curious how that played out.

[enyawd72]

The problem with both Marvel and DC is, they don't understand who their target audience is. This obsession with bringing in new readers is killing both companies. If you want new readers, you need to start young. Once kids are teenagers and young adults, their interests are already established, (usually in video games) and it's too late.
That's the problem. They're making books to appeal to a demographic that doesn't exist. Their target audience isn't interested in reading comics at all, and the comics they ARE putting out are so unrecognizable they've alienated the older readers and so adult-themed and violent young readers can't read them.

[Random Axe]

^^^Excellent point. Well written stories, great art and respect for the source material is universal. Everyone can appreciate that regardless of age. The two companies have become hype machines without a product to warrant said hype. A good book sells itself, period.

[johnnystorm]

Sometimes I just think it's all gotten too big. If there was one Superman book, one Batman book, one Spiderman book etc think how much easier it would be to read, understand, and coordinate continuity. This is what comics were in the good & silver age, before Marvel introduced the crossover concept of one universe. I'm not saying go back entirely, but do we need a half dozen Bat titles or X titles. What if there were 4 quarterly giant issues of Batman?
If you think about it, it's one of the reasons a literary series succeeds such as Harry Potter or The Bond books. A big quality piece people look forward to rather than rehashed watered down quantity work.

[samurainoir]

Can I recommend Wonder Woman Adventures for your daughter? 100 pages, kid friendly.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/DC-COMICS-PRESENTS-WONDER-WOMAN-ADVENTURES-1-DC-Comics-/190886804906?pt=US_Comic_Books&hash=item2c71bd7daa

Also, these Wonder Woman showcase volumes are of great value in terms of price and amount of content compared to a new 52 trade. Again, fairly kid friendly, although a bit dated sometimes.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/SHOWCASE-PRESENTS-WONDER-WOMAN-volume-4-tpb-/370966107833?pt=US_Comics_Graphic_Novels&hash=item565f4d96b9

[Earth 2 Chris]

That's a shame. I've run into that with my son and the DC of the past 7 to 8 years, not just New 52. I don't expect my DC comics to be Silver Age-lite, but there is no mind paid to making most of the comics accessible to young children. The monthly Superman and Batman books should ALWAYS be created in a way that a child 8 years and up can read them and not need therapy afterwards.

Another thing I find interesting is the continuity. By all accounts, the New 52 continuity is just as muddied and incomprehensible as any that came before it. The never-ending crossovers they've had since it's inception have created a dense storyline that sends new readers packing, and old readers scratching their heads. The elements of the old continuity they have kept (in Batman and GL) only make it worse, because you still have to worry about retcons to make the old stories work...and by old I mean stories from 3 years ago.

I'm sure there are still many who are enjoying the New 52, and if so, great. But I still believe it was a knee-jerk reaction to a corporate edict. They launched the space shuttle too quickly, with no wings and have been patching it up along the way.

Chris

[hedrap]

Very much appreciated, Samurai. I had totally forgotten about the Adventures series.

Re: Multiple titles. It's all about the sales. I learned that during the 90's X-Whatever explosion. On one hand, they need those multiple titles to carry all the weaker sellers, but on the other, it dilutes the character value.

As individual issues, the constant move towards serialized stories is now at overkill. Every decade, the material has gotten less...dense? I'm not sure exactly how to explain it yet, but there's been this odd tradeoff between narrative and simplicity. Where older comics were "simple" in story structure it allowed them to be detailed in narrative and with 52, we see incredibly complex structure, but minimal narrative.

It's a really strange publisher/editorial decision and must be serving a number of masters. By going to such a minimal/serial approach, the writer gets to take what normally would have been a three issue story arc, max, and drag it out for over six months. That, in turn, favors a film approach, so the panels really do resemble polished storyboards moreso than visual storytelling.

For example, in WW, when Hyppolyta is explaining WW's "true" birth to her, the encounter between Hyp and Zeus is spread over 3-4 pages, one a full splash, and with a handful of offscreen caption boxes. Now, pick your talent at this point, but the name players going back to Stan and Jack could have done this in a page, maybe two if they really wanted emphasis. But - if your goal is to sell this story to an exec or a producer, then you just laid out a 5-10 minute scene.

So for demos and target audiences, they would be much better served condensing the storylines and toning down the visuals. The visuals are too graphic for early readers, while the stories are too thin or half-baked for adults. In a WW movie, you're not going to see a naked Zeus getting it on with Hyppolyta or thousands of skinned bodies in hades, so why in the comic? So if they're not publishing for the studios, then it's only for everyone else in the industry and the insular crowd, which becomes self-defeating.