(no subject)
This week’s comic rants: I’ve decided that by typing these while at work, I can not only do them more frequently and not miss weeks, but I can also stave off the EXTREME BOREDOM of my job. I honestly had one of my managers ask me how to bold and underline something in excel yesterday. So, here we go! I’ll give in the order that I read (or listened to).
Wonder Woman: Champion of Themyscira #14: OMG Words cannot describe my love of the ‘Titans’ subplot. I’m still giggling over Hermes and Pan. “LADIES!” And the cookies! And the flirty Tim/Cass wonderfulness! And Kara and Ares!! Oh, Kara… why can’t you be this full of awesome in the comics? You were kind of awesome in your own book today, but still! I’m all speechless and rendered giddy and such. And next week! I totally know what’s gonna happen and I’m TOTALLY STOKED! (And I totally need to send the cover over to Jeffrey! Allow me to channel Vreni for a moment: Bad, Kris! Bad!) Seriously, folks. Why aren’t you listening? Imperium, yo!! Fo’ realz!!!
52 #46: So, I wasn’t really a fan of the mad scientist subplot at the beginning, but it was really fun to week. Oh, Dr. Magnus! Oh, Dr. Morrow! Oh how I love you silly, silly mens! And poor Adam. He’s so angry and hurt and he gets his ass handed to him by a bunch of pencil-necked geeks. And Clark randomly was back… last time we saw him he was being interrogated (IE: having the shit beat out of his depowered Kryptonian ass) by some of Luthor’s men back BEFORE the big Supernova reveal. Now he’s suddenly back and I have to ask: Whoa, there, 52! Gonna explain to us how Clark got out of that? Please? And could we please have a revamp on the continuity of Clark’s child hood? Since when in the modern age has he known Lex since they were kids? I know they did pre-crisis and in Smallville continuity, but as I understood things, modern age continuity didn’t have Lex and Clark meet until after Clark was already at the Planet and acting as Superman. I guess this whole “silver age revert” thing we’re going through now includes Superman’s continuity. Next week: GOTHAM! YAY! BATWOMAN AND JASON!NIGHTWING AND CARMEN SANDIEGO MONTOYA!
Detective #830: OH TIMMERZ! OH BRUCIE! OH WOOBIE BOYS! Ok, So I said I’d do a proper review of this when the second part came out, and here it is! Tim and Bruce are shown being very TIM and BRUCE! And it makes me giggle with fangirl delight. I have no idea if this story line was “good” or not, but I sure as hell liked it for all it’s Timness. And Bruceness. The thought processes the boys have are so dead on. Tim’s “I’m on fire!’ was fantastic, and in my head, I totally hear Jon Sulzbach’s voice (again, people, Pendaaaaaaaant, common). For a minute, when Bruce was telling Tim to go to the supply closet and Tim asked if there was anyway to get the C-4 off him and Bruce said “Yes but you’re not going to like it” I thought B was going to tell Tim to strip. That would have made my freaking day and would have totally played in with the “don’t make me lock you in the cave” line from the first issue of this arc. Detective comics has made me consistently happy since last June. Thank you, DC bat gods, for putting out at least one consistently good bat-book. The first bit of Dini’s run is coming out on TPB soon under the title Batman: Detective. If you haven’t been picking up Detective lately, I HIGHLY suggest this book. It’s chock full of Batman at his best. Of all the writers out there, I think Dini understands Batman the best.
Brave and the Bold #2: Ok, this issue wasn’t terrible. The plot is interesting, and JAIME REYES was in it, and smarting off to Batman, which fills me full of giggly glee and, IMHO, makes it worth the money. Echinacea. Really, Beetle, how’d you get to be so freaking cute. On an interesting note: Much props to Perez for his accurate rendering of the terrain around El Paso, TX. However, I can’t give this issue as much love as I gave the first one, though, for one reason. Attack of the Super-Slut. Dear God. She was coming onto Hal like a drunken prom queen! Like a 2 dollar ho’ getting offered 10 grand! Like… like… Like HARLEY on JOKER! It was really creepy. First off, I know Hal’s new body is 28 or so, but his brain is still, what, mid 40s? He’s older than Bruce and Clark mentally. And he knew it was creepy. And he told Kara off for it, to which I give Hal much, much, much love. I would say that it was horribly out of character for Kara to be hitting on Hal like she just came out of a Brittney Spears music video, but then again, isn’t that what Super-torso is supposed to be? Next month is Bats Beetle team up. It will make this worth while. I miss Ted, but I sure love the bejezus out of Jaime. But wait… Don’t the Bats in West Texas EAT Beetles?! EEEEK!
Flash: Fastest Man Alive #10": BARTHOLEMEW ALLEN! THERE YOU ARE! WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN YOUNG MAN? WE”VE BEEN LOOKING ALL OVER FOR YOU, WORRIED SICK! You are grounded to my room for the rest of the month! Rrrrowrrrr! Ok, Seriously, Bart Allen is Back, Folks. Dance with glee! GLEE, I SAY GLEE! He’s older, yes, more mature, yes, but some things have been translated over. Gone are the childish picture/thought bubbles and instead we have little, spoken out-loud asides. “Either we wait for the Keystone Cops… which I just realized how funny that is, no wonder this city needs a superhero… get here and extradite you to LA where they have the death penalty.” Or how about: “Criminals aren’t the only ones who return to the scene of the crime. I’m the only one of my classmates to come out here so far. Which means I’m either really smart or really stupid. (Or I’m the only one who can zip over here in an eyeblink)”. Or perhaps you would enjoy: “No world ending battles, no big scary monsters, no evil clones, no New Gods, no ex-roommates, just your plain old bank robbery. By the time I get back, the car in front of me has moved 4 feet. Maybe if I go fast enough I can get back to the bank and have that guy shoot me.” In this book, Bart is Smart and Funny. He still speaks before he thinks (As seen in his fight with Zoom and Captain Cold) and this has led him to be rather witty and smarmy without being a total smart alek like Wally sometimes was. I can see a lot of Wally like qualities in Bart’s humor, but that might be more from hanging out with Tim and Kon for so long (Who are smarmy bastiches of the highest degree). But Bart is something that Wally could never be: Bart has become an investigator. All that time around Tim and reading the entire San Fran library and all that training with Max and Jay have finally paid off. The little boy that the Great Detective labeled “impulse” as a warning to all has grown up to be a detective. I find wonderful poetic justice in that. And I know that Bruce knows this. You just KNOW that Bruce has been keeping an eye on Bart. I wondered why it was Bats who was vouching for Bart back in the first issue of JLA, and seeing this I totally understand.
Here’s how my brain is going to see things: Bats has always known of Bart’s potential, he saw it when Bart single handedly brought down the Joker. He’s been watching Tim work with Bart, knowing that Tim would do a much better job at training Bart than Wally would. Now that Bart is grown, Bats sees all the training Tim’s given through the years compounded with Max and Jay’s work has turned Bart into quite the crime fighter. Not superhero, Crime fighter. And Bats knows, what with all the superheroes on the League, they tactically need another investigator. Before, they always had Ralph as back up should Bats not be available. Now, they will have Bart. This is how it will work in my head and CANON BE DAMNED!
I’m noticing that Dan Didio, while he didn’t like the concept of ‘Young Justice’, doesn’t seem to have the same hard on for smiting the third generation heroes that he had for, say, the Giffen league. We’ve actually had some good character development for Tim, Cass, Bart, and even Kon, who I still hold out hope for a resurrection, even if it is a false hope. Finally, Bart has a Honda Fit! The Fit is go! It might be a Chevy Aveo, or a Toyota Yaris, but I’m gonna tell myself it’s a Fit. You know that he totally bought into the marketing campaign there.
PS: TOTALLY ROCKING THE ART! Bart is soooo cute.
Supergirl #15: The reason why I read this last wasn’t because I was saving what I hoped to be best for last, it’s because it was the last thing I grabbed off the shelf so it was at the bottom of the stack! Kara was cute in this. She kicked much butt. I was already talking with Angel_Gidget before about how crappy it is that Powerboy just turned out to be your average psycho stalker type. The fact he absorbs emotions and harneses them into energy beams is kind of cool, though. And I did figure that his back ground would be something along the lines of: Soldier on Apokalips trained to come to earth, act as a hero, then turn evil at last minute but fell in love with Kara when she was going through her “I love Darksied” phase. That was rather predictable. However, the issue was worth it for the page where Kara gives PB a super-powered knee strait to the groin.
And also: Dear Dan Didio and DC Comics: If you want girls to read comics, and Supergirl in particular like you begged a few months back, then please, STOP MAKING HER THE BIGGEST MARY SUE EVER! The girls who read comics are most likely the same girls who read tons of manga, watch anime, do cosplay, read Harry Potter, and write fanfiction. As such, these girl fans are highly vigilant of Mary Sue stories. I know from personal experience that when looking for a story or fic to read I look for certain key words in the summary to let me know if this story is a Sue story.If I had to give Supergirl a blanket summary as the book exists now, it would read: “The adventures of Superman’s cute 17 year old cousin who everyone loves. She’s faster and stronger than Superman, even though she’s only been exposed to a yellow sun for 2 years and is tiny and he’s been exposed for 35 years and is beefcake. She’s been brainwashed twice but everyone forgives her for it because she’s so cute. She can live on her own with no parental supervision, she doesn’t have to go to school, and she can join whichever hero team she wants even though she’s only 17 years old. She dates bad boys and dates multiple boys at once without nary a 'young lady' from Clark. But, deep under it all, she is really a secret weapon with crystal powers sent to earth to KILL KAL-EL so she’s conflicted with ANGST and EMO.”
I’m sorry, but if you take that story and replace reverences to Superman with Harry Potter you have the CLASSIC Harry Potter sue fic. With Captain Kirk, the classic Trek sue fic. With ANYTHING you have the classic sue fic. Why? Because Supergirl, as she is right now, is a FREAKING MARY SUE. You aren’t going to get the girl audience you want to target here by putting out a Mary Sue character. It is so out of character for Clark to just let her run wild. If he really loved her so much and thought of her as his family, then why wouldn’t he be asking the Kents to take her in and enrolling her at Smallville High? Are you trying to tell us that he cant say no to her? That giving her space is more important to him than her safety? That she’s somehow more special that Superboy, even though they were the same age? The way I see it, her track record is just as bad as Kon’s, if not worse, on doing bone-headded teenage things. And Kon was around for a lot longer before Supes even paid him mind, let alone called him family. Or is it you’re telling us that Superman never saw Kon as family and just wanted to keep him under heel?
Honestly, DC, you want a Supergirl book girls will read, this is what you do: You just hired Sean McKeever out from under Marvel on an exclusive so put him on as writer. Find someone with a more manga-like style like Sean Galloway or someone who knows how to draw girls like Amanda Conner to do pencils. Have the setting be that after this plot about her being some kind of sleeper assassin comes to a close, Clark decides the best thing for Kara is to have some parental supervision. He knows he’s not the best person for the job, so he sends her to Smallville to live with the Kents and go to Smallville High. There she has to deal with Clark’s legacy of being the goldenboy of the school, and Kon’s legacy of being the school outcast. She spends time getting to know Kon as the brother she never really got a chance to know. She holds off on the hero stuff, wanting to just be a normal kid, using her powers to do stuff like cheat on tests (xray vision) or get back at some girl who was mean to her (Honestly, teacher, how could I have caught her sweater on fire? It’s not like I have heat vision or anything), but since the Crisis there’s been an influx of strange happenings and increased meta human activities that have even reached Smallville, so sometimes she has to do the Supergirl thing. Have a cast of steady supporting characters: A friend at school who doesn’t know about the hero stuff, a rival who dislikes how Kara came in and is pretty and in a mean girls type way fights to keep her from being popular, a jock boy who Kara crushes on, the nerd boy who she should like, and guest appearances by Wonder Girl, who the Kents are still very fond of. Bring back the contests to have fans design Supergirl outfits for Kara and maybe give Kara a Daidouji Tomoyo type friend who loves to make her new outfits for the occasional super heroing. This would be the book that dealt with how big a loss to the Super Family Kon’s death has been. The focus wouldn’t be on hero stuff, but rather trying to get through being a teenage girl and vastly different from everyone around you. In other words: The Dawson’s Creek/Smallville model story. Yes, it has been done, but it works. Release it in monthly digests, but do the TPBs in the pocket format manga come in. Do 4 or 5 issues a TPB so you can put out several in a year, and put your sales emphasis on the TPBs rather than the monthlies. Put some advertising in magazines like YM and Teen People and Seventeen and do avert campaigns with Barnes and Noble and Borders to place the books with the Manga rather than with the American Comics. Maybe even release it under the CMX label rather than DC. At the risk of sounding like James Earl Jones in Field of Dreams: If you do this, girls will read.
So, that’s it. Huzzah for comics. According to the DC Board, next week I should get JLA #7, 52 #47, Connor Hawke #5, and Teen Titans Go #41. For the record, today’s comic rant took me an hour and a half to write, but since I wrote it while cooped up at the office, I will have all evening to work on the finishing highlights for Superman #27’s cover and the coloring for Dixie #10. Still don’t know what I’m talking about? Gah! Listen to Superman and Listen to Dixie!
Wonder Woman: Champion of Themyscira #14: OMG Words cannot describe my love of the ‘Titans’ subplot. I’m still giggling over Hermes and Pan. “LADIES!” And the cookies! And the flirty Tim/Cass wonderfulness! And Kara and Ares!! Oh, Kara… why can’t you be this full of awesome in the comics? You were kind of awesome in your own book today, but still! I’m all speechless and rendered giddy and such. And next week! I totally know what’s gonna happen and I’m TOTALLY STOKED! (And I totally need to send the cover over to Jeffrey! Allow me to channel Vreni for a moment: Bad, Kris! Bad!) Seriously, folks. Why aren’t you listening? Imperium, yo!! Fo’ realz!!!
52 #46: So, I wasn’t really a fan of the mad scientist subplot at the beginning, but it was really fun to week. Oh, Dr. Magnus! Oh, Dr. Morrow! Oh how I love you silly, silly mens! And poor Adam. He’s so angry and hurt and he gets his ass handed to him by a bunch of pencil-necked geeks. And Clark randomly was back… last time we saw him he was being interrogated (IE: having the shit beat out of his depowered Kryptonian ass) by some of Luthor’s men back BEFORE the big Supernova reveal. Now he’s suddenly back and I have to ask: Whoa, there, 52! Gonna explain to us how Clark got out of that? Please? And could we please have a revamp on the continuity of Clark’s child hood? Since when in the modern age has he known Lex since they were kids? I know they did pre-crisis and in Smallville continuity, but as I understood things, modern age continuity didn’t have Lex and Clark meet until after Clark was already at the Planet and acting as Superman. I guess this whole “silver age revert” thing we’re going through now includes Superman’s continuity. Next week: GOTHAM! YAY! BATWOMAN AND JASON!NIGHTWING AND CARMEN SANDIEGO MONTOYA!
Detective #830: OH TIMMERZ! OH BRUCIE! OH WOOBIE BOYS! Ok, So I said I’d do a proper review of this when the second part came out, and here it is! Tim and Bruce are shown being very TIM and BRUCE! And it makes me giggle with fangirl delight. I have no idea if this story line was “good” or not, but I sure as hell liked it for all it’s Timness. And Bruceness. The thought processes the boys have are so dead on. Tim’s “I’m on fire!’ was fantastic, and in my head, I totally hear Jon Sulzbach’s voice (again, people, Pendaaaaaaaant, common). For a minute, when Bruce was telling Tim to go to the supply closet and Tim asked if there was anyway to get the C-4 off him and Bruce said “Yes but you’re not going to like it” I thought B was going to tell Tim to strip. That would have made my freaking day and would have totally played in with the “don’t make me lock you in the cave” line from the first issue of this arc. Detective comics has made me consistently happy since last June. Thank you, DC bat gods, for putting out at least one consistently good bat-book. The first bit of Dini’s run is coming out on TPB soon under the title Batman: Detective. If you haven’t been picking up Detective lately, I HIGHLY suggest this book. It’s chock full of Batman at his best. Of all the writers out there, I think Dini understands Batman the best.
Brave and the Bold #2: Ok, this issue wasn’t terrible. The plot is interesting, and JAIME REYES was in it, and smarting off to Batman, which fills me full of giggly glee and, IMHO, makes it worth the money. Echinacea. Really, Beetle, how’d you get to be so freaking cute. On an interesting note: Much props to Perez for his accurate rendering of the terrain around El Paso, TX. However, I can’t give this issue as much love as I gave the first one, though, for one reason. Attack of the Super-Slut. Dear God. She was coming onto Hal like a drunken prom queen! Like a 2 dollar ho’ getting offered 10 grand! Like… like… Like HARLEY on JOKER! It was really creepy. First off, I know Hal’s new body is 28 or so, but his brain is still, what, mid 40s? He’s older than Bruce and Clark mentally. And he knew it was creepy. And he told Kara off for it, to which I give Hal much, much, much love. I would say that it was horribly out of character for Kara to be hitting on Hal like she just came out of a Brittney Spears music video, but then again, isn’t that what Super-torso is supposed to be? Next month is Bats Beetle team up. It will make this worth while. I miss Ted, but I sure love the bejezus out of Jaime. But wait… Don’t the Bats in West Texas EAT Beetles?! EEEEK!
Flash: Fastest Man Alive #10": BARTHOLEMEW ALLEN! THERE YOU ARE! WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN YOUNG MAN? WE”VE BEEN LOOKING ALL OVER FOR YOU, WORRIED SICK! You are grounded to my room for the rest of the month! Rrrrowrrrr! Ok, Seriously, Bart Allen is Back, Folks. Dance with glee! GLEE, I SAY GLEE! He’s older, yes, more mature, yes, but some things have been translated over. Gone are the childish picture/thought bubbles and instead we have little, spoken out-loud asides. “Either we wait for the Keystone Cops… which I just realized how funny that is, no wonder this city needs a superhero… get here and extradite you to LA where they have the death penalty.” Or how about: “Criminals aren’t the only ones who return to the scene of the crime. I’m the only one of my classmates to come out here so far. Which means I’m either really smart or really stupid. (Or I’m the only one who can zip over here in an eyeblink)”. Or perhaps you would enjoy: “No world ending battles, no big scary monsters, no evil clones, no New Gods, no ex-roommates, just your plain old bank robbery. By the time I get back, the car in front of me has moved 4 feet. Maybe if I go fast enough I can get back to the bank and have that guy shoot me.” In this book, Bart is Smart and Funny. He still speaks before he thinks (As seen in his fight with Zoom and Captain Cold) and this has led him to be rather witty and smarmy without being a total smart alek like Wally sometimes was. I can see a lot of Wally like qualities in Bart’s humor, but that might be more from hanging out with Tim and Kon for so long (Who are smarmy bastiches of the highest degree). But Bart is something that Wally could never be: Bart has become an investigator. All that time around Tim and reading the entire San Fran library and all that training with Max and Jay have finally paid off. The little boy that the Great Detective labeled “impulse” as a warning to all has grown up to be a detective. I find wonderful poetic justice in that. And I know that Bruce knows this. You just KNOW that Bruce has been keeping an eye on Bart. I wondered why it was Bats who was vouching for Bart back in the first issue of JLA, and seeing this I totally understand.
Here’s how my brain is going to see things: Bats has always known of Bart’s potential, he saw it when Bart single handedly brought down the Joker. He’s been watching Tim work with Bart, knowing that Tim would do a much better job at training Bart than Wally would. Now that Bart is grown, Bats sees all the training Tim’s given through the years compounded with Max and Jay’s work has turned Bart into quite the crime fighter. Not superhero, Crime fighter. And Bats knows, what with all the superheroes on the League, they tactically need another investigator. Before, they always had Ralph as back up should Bats not be available. Now, they will have Bart. This is how it will work in my head and CANON BE DAMNED!
I’m noticing that Dan Didio, while he didn’t like the concept of ‘Young Justice’, doesn’t seem to have the same hard on for smiting the third generation heroes that he had for, say, the Giffen league. We’ve actually had some good character development for Tim, Cass, Bart, and even Kon, who I still hold out hope for a resurrection, even if it is a false hope. Finally, Bart has a Honda Fit! The Fit is go! It might be a Chevy Aveo, or a Toyota Yaris, but I’m gonna tell myself it’s a Fit. You know that he totally bought into the marketing campaign there.
PS: TOTALLY ROCKING THE ART! Bart is soooo cute.
Supergirl #15: The reason why I read this last wasn’t because I was saving what I hoped to be best for last, it’s because it was the last thing I grabbed off the shelf so it was at the bottom of the stack! Kara was cute in this. She kicked much butt. I was already talking with Angel_Gidget before about how crappy it is that Powerboy just turned out to be your average psycho stalker type. The fact he absorbs emotions and harneses them into energy beams is kind of cool, though. And I did figure that his back ground would be something along the lines of: Soldier on Apokalips trained to come to earth, act as a hero, then turn evil at last minute but fell in love with Kara when she was going through her “I love Darksied” phase. That was rather predictable. However, the issue was worth it for the page where Kara gives PB a super-powered knee strait to the groin.
And also: Dear Dan Didio and DC Comics: If you want girls to read comics, and Supergirl in particular like you begged a few months back, then please, STOP MAKING HER THE BIGGEST MARY SUE EVER! The girls who read comics are most likely the same girls who read tons of manga, watch anime, do cosplay, read Harry Potter, and write fanfiction. As such, these girl fans are highly vigilant of Mary Sue stories. I know from personal experience that when looking for a story or fic to read I look for certain key words in the summary to let me know if this story is a Sue story.If I had to give Supergirl a blanket summary as the book exists now, it would read: “The adventures of Superman’s cute 17 year old cousin who everyone loves. She’s faster and stronger than Superman, even though she’s only been exposed to a yellow sun for 2 years and is tiny and he’s been exposed for 35 years and is beefcake. She’s been brainwashed twice but everyone forgives her for it because she’s so cute. She can live on her own with no parental supervision, she doesn’t have to go to school, and she can join whichever hero team she wants even though she’s only 17 years old. She dates bad boys and dates multiple boys at once without nary a 'young lady' from Clark. But, deep under it all, she is really a secret weapon with crystal powers sent to earth to KILL KAL-EL so she’s conflicted with ANGST and EMO.”
I’m sorry, but if you take that story and replace reverences to Superman with Harry Potter you have the CLASSIC Harry Potter sue fic. With Captain Kirk, the classic Trek sue fic. With ANYTHING you have the classic sue fic. Why? Because Supergirl, as she is right now, is a FREAKING MARY SUE. You aren’t going to get the girl audience you want to target here by putting out a Mary Sue character. It is so out of character for Clark to just let her run wild. If he really loved her so much and thought of her as his family, then why wouldn’t he be asking the Kents to take her in and enrolling her at Smallville High? Are you trying to tell us that he cant say no to her? That giving her space is more important to him than her safety? That she’s somehow more special that Superboy, even though they were the same age? The way I see it, her track record is just as bad as Kon’s, if not worse, on doing bone-headded teenage things. And Kon was around for a lot longer before Supes even paid him mind, let alone called him family. Or is it you’re telling us that Superman never saw Kon as family and just wanted to keep him under heel?
Honestly, DC, you want a Supergirl book girls will read, this is what you do: You just hired Sean McKeever out from under Marvel on an exclusive so put him on as writer. Find someone with a more manga-like style like Sean Galloway or someone who knows how to draw girls like Amanda Conner to do pencils. Have the setting be that after this plot about her being some kind of sleeper assassin comes to a close, Clark decides the best thing for Kara is to have some parental supervision. He knows he’s not the best person for the job, so he sends her to Smallville to live with the Kents and go to Smallville High. There she has to deal with Clark’s legacy of being the goldenboy of the school, and Kon’s legacy of being the school outcast. She spends time getting to know Kon as the brother she never really got a chance to know. She holds off on the hero stuff, wanting to just be a normal kid, using her powers to do stuff like cheat on tests (xray vision) or get back at some girl who was mean to her (Honestly, teacher, how could I have caught her sweater on fire? It’s not like I have heat vision or anything), but since the Crisis there’s been an influx of strange happenings and increased meta human activities that have even reached Smallville, so sometimes she has to do the Supergirl thing. Have a cast of steady supporting characters: A friend at school who doesn’t know about the hero stuff, a rival who dislikes how Kara came in and is pretty and in a mean girls type way fights to keep her from being popular, a jock boy who Kara crushes on, the nerd boy who she should like, and guest appearances by Wonder Girl, who the Kents are still very fond of. Bring back the contests to have fans design Supergirl outfits for Kara and maybe give Kara a Daidouji Tomoyo type friend who loves to make her new outfits for the occasional super heroing. This would be the book that dealt with how big a loss to the Super Family Kon’s death has been. The focus wouldn’t be on hero stuff, but rather trying to get through being a teenage girl and vastly different from everyone around you. In other words: The Dawson’s Creek/Smallville model story. Yes, it has been done, but it works. Release it in monthly digests, but do the TPBs in the pocket format manga come in. Do 4 or 5 issues a TPB so you can put out several in a year, and put your sales emphasis on the TPBs rather than the monthlies. Put some advertising in magazines like YM and Teen People and Seventeen and do avert campaigns with Barnes and Noble and Borders to place the books with the Manga rather than with the American Comics. Maybe even release it under the CMX label rather than DC. At the risk of sounding like James Earl Jones in Field of Dreams: If you do this, girls will read.
So, that’s it. Huzzah for comics. According to the DC Board, next week I should get JLA #7, 52 #47, Connor Hawke #5, and Teen Titans Go #41. For the record, today’s comic rant took me an hour and a half to write, but since I wrote it while cooped up at the office, I will have all evening to work on the finishing highlights for Superman #27’s cover and the coloring for Dixie #10. Still don’t know what I’m talking about? Gah! Listen to Superman and Listen to Dixie!