Booster Gold #30: “Things Are Booming in Coast City, OR Rip was tripping on mushrooms and no one was even there.”

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Linkblogging

Compliments of Simon Pegg's Twitter site, fans and press alike have been clamoring over a four-minute clip from the American, McG-helmed remake of Spaced that was almost unleashed on an unsuspecting public a few years back in the wake of The Office and House proving that British television can work on a major American network. See for yourself why it was axed after only the pilot (little things like the original creators freaking out and a Facebook campaign to boycott the damned thing notwithstanding, I mean). For my part, I'm skeptical of what this proves. Certainly it's pretty godawful, but it's hard to figure out for my part whether it's awful because it's awful, or just because it's beat-for-beat a ripoff of the UK show and so I know how it "should" look and sound. Bear in mind, the US version of The Office is a critical and audience favorite six years in, and the pilot for that show was basically a line-for-line ripoff of the UK version, too.

Kirby Krackle's new record, E For Everyone, hit this Tuesday. I'm checking it out now and will have a review and interview when the band return from this weekend's Emerald City ComiCon. A single from the record, "Ring Capacity," was released a few months ago. The ode to Green Lantern was clever and catchy, and bodes well for the album.

Warner Home Video has a Scooby-Doo promotion starting on Monday. Originally it was going to start today, but after I'd already written this column the press guys wrote back to ask reporters to hold off on the announcement until Monday, presumably so they can get the website to the stage where they want it or something. More on that later.

Hill & Wang, a division of Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, will publish Ted Rall's forthcoming book about his forthcoming trip to Afghanistan (a kind of sequel to his popular 2002 NBM hardcover To Afghanistan and Back)--assuming there is a trip. Rall's success in getting the project funded through Kickstarter haven't panned out yet, and the amount he says he needs isn't just to cover crappy hotel rooms. Rall describes the $25,000 goal as necessary "for travel expenses, including bribes to avoid capture." Rall's last graphic novel, an autobiographical confessional with art by Pablo Callejo called The Year of Loving Dangerously, was one of last year's best.Listen to me talk to Rall about it on Comic Related's "Related Recap" podcast.

Gearing up for convention season, a couple of smaller publishers have reached out to fans this week: Brant Fowler has put out some feelers about low-cost print advertising for as little as $5 in his upcoming comic, and Alterna Comics has approached their mailing list about both paid advertising and website advertising trades. Gotta pay for gas somehow when you're driving all over the country, folks!

Following on the heels of the Amazon debacle, apparently not only has Barnes & Noble faced some similar glitches, but Amazon has revoked the "buy" buttons from comics and graphic novels until the issue is resolved to their satisfaction. Ouch.

Yes Men Press Release

ADM Tries to Take Down Funny Video; Big Business Has No Solutions; Now What?

• ADM video still available here, here, and (for download and reposting) here; page here
• Fake initiatives pages, with links to organizations seeking change on these issues
• More information about last week's website and videos
• Contact: scurrilous@theyesmen.org, bportello@cinemalibrestudio.com

A legal complaint from agribusiness giant ADM has resulted in the removal from Youtube of a fake video of ADM's CEO making over-honest pronouncements. (The video is still available here, here, and, for download and reposting, here.)

Last week, the filmmaking team behind The End of Poverty? partnered with the Yes Men to create a parallel, imaginary World Economic Forum in which world leaders came up with real solutions to poverty. The leaders seemed, in a < href="http://www.we-forum.org/en/events/AnnualMeeting2010/index.shtml">series of videos, to be supporting a set of initiatives based on 10 Solutions to End Poverty, a petition for which the filmmakers are trying to get ten million signatures by the end of 2010.

Each of those initiatives pages has links to organizations that are fighting hard for change on these issues.

In contrast, the actual World Economic Forum ended Sunday with a profound lack of results, some seemingly satirical but all-too-real headlines (like Goldman Sachs's Lloyd Blankfein's rumoured $100 million bonus), and one fruitless complaint to Youtube.

"If we can bail out bankers to the tune of trillions of dollars, surely we can solve poverty, which will just take a few structural changes, plus a whole lot less money," said Beth Portello, the producer of The End of Poverty?

"All the crises we're facing are rooted in massive inequality and poverty," says Philippe Diaz, the film's director. "If these leaders really wanted to make a difference, they would work towards ending poverty, however uncomfortable that might be for business."

"It's easier to remove funny videos from Youtube," added Portello.

“World’s greatest superheroes?” I just don’t see it.

The first issue featuring the newest incarnation of the Justice League of America’s lineup hit this week, and over the top of the title, DC blares that the book features the world’s greatest supeheroes. While no more inherently ridiculous than the Fantastic Four’s long-held claim to being the greatest comic magazine, this one’s a lot more offensive. Why? Because the cover features Congorilla, Mon-El/Valor wearing a Superman logo (everybody’s doing it—the Eradicator, raised from the dead without explanation in this month’s issue of The Outsiders, is back to sporting a big, red S as well) and Starfire, who’s come to this team straight from the orgy of failure that is The Titans. Joined in this comic by fellow Titans (not Teen Titans—Titans. There’s a difference) Donna Troy, Dick Grayson and Cyborg, it soon becomes clear that the Justice League of America has become the dumping-ground for promising characters who just don’t fit into DC’s idea of what they want to do with other titles (like letting a crazed badguy who’s already been overexposed since Identity Crisis lead his own team of “Titans”). Mon-El and The Guardian, both so incredibly popular with the fans that during the time they’ve starred in the Superman titles, sales have dropped by about forty percent, represent the Metropolis contingent with Batman’s understudy and Hal Jordan (currently featured in three monthly books as well as guest-starring all over the place) being the closest thing this team has to A-listers. Seriously, folks, I think that the upcoming Justice League: Generation Lost by Keith Giffen and Judd Winick, which will feature Guy Gardner, Booster Gold, Fire, Ice and the rest of the old JLI—once known as the all-time bottom of the Justice League barrel—may feature a more prestigious lineup than these clowns.

Inside, Red Tornado has been torn to pieces for something like the 185^th time in his last 185 appearances. Vixen, the only representative of the Detroit Era JLA to make it into this volume of the title and who has been, to the disappointment of many fans, a member of the team since J’Onn J’Onzz left for no reason after having been with the team since its founding, decides that she’s got to quit the team, because she’s ashamed of what they did at the end of the hideously misguided editorial abortion known as Justice League: Cry For Justice (yes, the end of the miniseries that hasn’t ended yet).

The rest of the team struggles to recover from the aftereffects of Blackest Night (yes, the end of the miniseries that hasn’t ended yet), which raised many of their old teammates from the dead as villains, and even forced some living heroes to play dead for a while so they could be villains. Don’t worry, James Robinson assures the readers, “We ‘awoke,’ though. We survived.” That’s good news, I guess, for the thousands of readers who are eagerly awaiting February 24^th’s Blackest Night #7 (of 8), in which the story of those heroes who have been taken over by Nekron continues to play out. I’m sure nobody would mind being told that the biggest event of the year, in which many fans have invested hundreds of bucks following every arcane tie-in, comes out alright enough in the wash.

All of these little editorial gaffes might be forgivable…if the comic were any good. Or original. Or fun. It’s none of those things. Mark Bagley’s art looks rushed and is outright hideous in some places (look at Damien’s face as he declares himself part of the Justice League, or Donna’s as she arrives to invite Batman. Also, if Hal Jordan’s body hasn’t been horribly mangled on a torture rack of some kind by the end of Blackest Night, there’s no reason whatsoever for the length of his torso and legs in comparison the rest of his body on the final story page). The story is dull and something we’ve all seen a hundred times before—Wonder Woman, acting as the only member of DC’s trinity not currently dead or living in outer space, picks a League and the rest of the issue is spent on a recruiting binge. There’s very little in terms of logical, reasonable cause to bring the characters together. Instead, it’s a team that’s being forced together out of the disparate pieces that DC editorial have decided, and Wonder Woman has prescribed, will compose it. It’s a whole issue of going through the motions, and the cardboard dialogue and pedestrian plot has to remind readers of last week’s awesome Starman #81 that James Robinson is best when he’s not handling the icons. Taking a franchise that nobody believed in or cared about, he crafted arguably the best ongoing monthly of the 1990s. Taking control of Superman and the Justice League of America, he’s created a directionless mess filled with uninteresting takes on third-tier characters.

Creative Team Changes Imminent for Booster?

On Monday, in an exclusive interview with CBR, DC honcho Dan DiDio announced that Jaime “Blue Beetle” Reyes will lose his co-feature in Booster Gold and be relocated to another book, but not as a co-feature or as the headliner of his own title. Additionally, DiDio announces that Manhunter will be dropped from Streets of Gotham. That’s a huge disappointment for this Manhunter fan, who has repeatedly written to DC in support of the title and who has bought dozens (literally) of graphic novels to hand out to potential new readers and get them hooked. So, already–not off to a great start…and then he says that there are “creative team changes” imminent for Booster Gold.

Dan Jurgens, who created the character and has drawn virtually every solo Booster story ever told, is currently the writer and artist; he participates in a monthly creator commentary here on Blog@, and also at Comic Related, that looks at Booster Gold shortly after publication. The possibility of Dan’s imminent departure hasn’t come up in any of our interviews, or off-topic e-mail conversations; I can say, though, that in order to replace Jurgens, the team would have to be phenomenal for the book to remain afloat.

I don’t think Booster Gold is as marketable a character as DC apparently does; it seems clear to me that the thing that’s kept the character going this long is that Jurgens has connected with the title’s (and the character’s) core fans. That his art keeps a level of consistency in the title that’s rarely, if ever, matched by a book in mainstream publication is an added bonus. For the title to work without Jurgens…I don’t know. It seems like it would have huge potential to feel a lot like when Aaron Sorkin was dropped from The West Wing, and the show deteriorated into mayhem, which they had to bring Sorkin back to attempt to salvage so that it could go out with dignity rather than be canceled after seven seasons as one of TV’s most respected shows.

As a Booster Gold fan, I actually am not as frustrated as many of my column's readers are with the loss of the Blue Beetle backup. Frankly I always thought second-features for mid-selling or low-selling books were a dicey proposition. Adding an extra buck to a title that was selling somewhere in the vicinity of 50k at $2.99 seemed like a pretty bad idea, unless the backup brought in a TON of extra readers, which didn’t seem to be the case. I’ll miss Jaime in a starring feature, but would be just as happy if he were starring as a backup in Teen Titans or some other title that’s less likely to shed readers for the extra buck.

Certainly I might be overreacting to the announcement–and I’ll of course keep readers posted as information comes into my hands–but the last two times they’ve needed a fill-in penciler, they’ve gone to Patrick Olliffe who, while a perfectly serviceable draftsman, is not right for the title. Rick Remender, whose two-issue fill-in as writer was the undisputed low point of the title’s publishing history, also expressed a desire, during his turn at bat with The Gold Exchange, to return to Booster in a more regular fashion so that he could tell the Chronos-and-Booster story he’d had planned during his time as writer of The All-New Atom. He is, as far as I know, Marvel-exclusive, but just the idea of him as the title’s ongoing writer makes my skin crawl.

Just so he's an equal opportunity disappointer, in the same CBR interview where DiDio talked about this, he also discusses the disappearance of basically every backup we know. Some titles (the lower-selling ones), like Booster Gold, Doom Patrol and Green Arrow, will revert to $2.99 and just be single stories again. Certain other books will get new backups. The Flash family appears hardest-hit, losing both the Wally West backup feature AND the Kid Flash monthly in the shuffle, leaving only Barry Allen, whose last turn as Flash ended in 1985. Way to reach out to younger readers, there, Dan!

Blue and Gold

So, following the revelation at the end of Booster Gold #27, I decided that Booster Gold: Blue and Gold was something that needed to be read through again. I did pick up on a few things that might be worth mentioning, but not worth an actual story, so...BLOG!

First of all, I noticed that there was a lot of items on Rip's blackboard that are, or seem to be, already explained:

• "The Perfect Peter Platinum isn't so perfect" - That guy appeared in Booster Gold #1,000,000
• "Listen to Libra - The Prince will fall on his sword." - J'Onn? Makes sense, given the time of the issue (I think), but why call him "The Prince"?
• "Why, Captain Atom? Why?" Given his role in Countdown, as Monarch, I'm guessing that's what's being referenced here.
• "Jean-Paul Valley Lives," immediately followed by "That's not him" was likely foreshadowing a new Azrael, which we've seen the fruit of already.
• "Trigon = Red herring" was actually the central plot point at the end of Booster Gold #24 and 25 - the last story written before "Blackest Night".

There still hasn't been a story to follow up on Rip Hunter's claim that he knows better than anyone else that you can't save people who are "supposed" to be dead, however badly you want to. It'd be interesting to know what the intent was there, and whether Jurgens still intends to follow up on Katz and Johns's idea. And there also hasn't been a direct follow-up on Jon Carter/Supernova calling Black Beetle "Joshua." While the throwaway line of his being from wherever he wants to go, whoever he wants to be, can pretty much make that irrelevant, it's the only time he's been referred to by a name, and it's by an ally, not an enemy, so he may have less of a reason to lie to Jon.

Q&A: Diane Nelson, President of DC Entertainment

Since the announcement in September that DC Comics was being swallowed up by a newly-formed DC Entertainment to bring it more into line with the rest of Warner Brothers’ corporate properties, fans have been a little curious as to what that means. Will Diane Nelson, the president of DC Entertainment, be as good for fans and creators as was the ousted Paul Levitz, her counterpart when it was just DC Comics? Will DC’s successful DC Direct toys and direct-to-DVD animated films be abandoned for something similar, but with more mainstream appeal?

The reality of it seems to be that even DC Entertainment doesn’t know for sure. Diane Nelson talked to the NewTimes about her view of the future—which is both murky (in the sense that she’s had the job for a week and a half and doesn’t have a lot of concrete plans yet) and optimistic (she thinks she can take back market share from Marvel without surrendering what makes things like the Vertigo line and “Wednesday Comics” work). And while there’s a lot of talk about DC characters being “brands” that can lend themselves to movies, videos and entertainment in non-comics media, Nelson herself says that at its heart, DC is a publishing enterprise.

Salon: Do you think your history with the Harry Potter license—a genre-fiction mainstay with an army of crazed fans who the movies had to appeal to—will help you at DC?

Diane Nelson: I think that my history at Warner Brothers in general whether it’s related to “Harry Potter” or any of the other DC and non-DC-related brands that I’ve been fortunate enough to work with, what they point out is how beloved they are and how large the fan bases are so I think having an appreciation for the fact that fans feel a sense of ownership of our brands—it never fails to surprise me how invested fans are behind these brands. What I hopefully bring to the party is an appreciation for the importance of these fans, and of being respectful to the storytelling and creators who bring these brands to life. That’s probably the common thread. The DC Universe animated made-for-videos are a great, specific opportunity to offer fans something that they might not have gotten otherwise; it’s also proven to be a great business for Warner Video and Warner Premiere. So I think when we keep the fans in mind we realize it can be good for everyone.

Salon: Comics never recaptured the print market after the crash of the 80's. How do you plan to retool DC Comics to re-ignite the interest of the non-traditional comic reader?

Diane Nelson: Publishing as I’ve said is going to continue to be the foundation on which DC Entertainment is built; DC Comics is a publishing company first and foremost; the whole publishing industry is going through enormous change and struggling but it would be my absolute intent to figure out if there are ways to not just support and sustain the existing business, but grow it so that’ll be a huge part of what we look at for the future.

Salon: What specifically is your view of the DC comic lines as they exist now, in terms of branding and marketing? Will we see a greater integration of DC, Vertigo, WildStorm and the film unit or will they stay more or less static?

Diane Nelson: There may well be opportunity to do more umbrella branding of DC Comics and DC Entertainment that could benefit us with consumers and retailers; it’s premature for me to say whether that will be true or not but it certainly will be one thing we look at. But I think the very nature of what a brand is, whether you’re looking at an individual brand like Batman or an imprint brand like Vertigo or WildStorm or Mad or the DC Universe titles—brand strength comes from a strength of continuity as to what that brand stands for. It’s premature for me to make any judgments about whether the resources within editorial can benefit from being more integrated. Time will tell about that, but I don’t think it’s a natural conclusion that there’s more to share among those, because they’re very different brands in and of themselves and the stories and characters underneath each one are uniquely related to that brand. I would never toss them all in one pot and call them one thing; I think that would be devaluing the huge equity that comes with each of the brands you’ve mentioned.

Salon: What is your view of the function of DC Direct? You’ve got other companies in the mix that make the “mainstream” toys for K-Marts and Wal-Marts, but your own company serves the direct market and the hardcore fans. Do you think the DC Direct strategy will be changing at all?

Diane Nelson: It’s really premature to say; I’m just beginning to think about what’s going to be right for the business moving forward so I think a lot of these questions we’ll have to revisit in the coming months because we’re not going to put forth what our strategy is yet; we just have a lot of work to do in the coming weeks.

Salon: DC has been more experimental and creative in the last few years—with Vertigo, with handing off major projects like “Final Crisis” to certifiable mad geniuses like Grant Morrison, and with “Wednesday Comics”—but Marvel has been more financially successful. Do you have a plan in place for taking back market share without surrendering what makes DC uniquely appealing?

Diane Nelson: Yes, we intend to do both. There’s not a plan in place because we just announced this ten days ago. So we are going to look very careful at the organization and how we make sure that we are set up and that the resources are there for the folks at DC Comics to be even more successful in the future working with Warner Brothers and from a standalone standpoint but we have no specific plans yet nor would I be ready to discuss them here if we did…but clearly growth and market share are some of our key drivers and we also recognize what’s special and unique about the characters and brands that comprise DC Comics and have every intention of protecting, maintaining and building those.

Salon: A number of analysts over the years have credited Avi Arad and his ability to make the comics people and the film people work well together with the success of Marvel since they emerged from bankruptcy. Do you have an Avi Arad-type picked out, are you looking for one, or did you get hired because you can be the “person in charge of developing properties?”

Diane Nelson: We have some people who do a version of that I suppose. Gregory Novak has a small team and they’ve done a wonderful job of liaising with the Warner Brothers businesses as well as other studios to bring the intellectual property that is part of DC to life in other mediums but clearly we’re going to look at what we can do even more effectively for the future. I will have a big role in that and we will be setting the organization on a path where that is a big part of their focus so yes we intend to do that but it’s again premature to talk about how or with whom.

Salon: You told the Comics Alliance earlier this month that you “can’t underestimate” the relationship between the stories being told in the comics and the licenses, movies, etc. How does that jive with the originally-announced idea of leaving the comics to the comics people?

Diane Nelson: There are a tremendous number of people both at DC Comics on staff as well as creators who work with DC Comics who have expressed to me already even in the few days that have gone by since we announced this, their desire to help build DC Comics and its characters across all screens. So I don’t have any concern about our ability to rally people—credible people who are deeply knowledgeable of the characters and the stories—to find a way to tell those stories across any of the mediums that we focus on. That actually is going to be the least of my concerns , I suspect.

Salon: How fine does your interest go? Are you involved in things like deciding what stories become direct-to-DVD movies, or helping DiDio determine which books get canceled? A lot of comic book people are wondering why mega-popular stories like “The Judas Contract” and “The Great Darkness Saga” are back-burnered to make room for more Superman and Batman. Those franchises are already healthy; imagine if DC could pull an “Iron Man” with the Legion of Super-Heroes!

Diane Nelson: We’ll figure that out as a team. There’ll be a lot of people weighing in on what the right approach is for all parts of the medium. But we’re about ten days into this so my primary focus right now is putting together our business plan and looking at the support that the DC Comics organization needs to do the best job they can.

Salon: Besides the big-budget superhero movies that are tent poles for everyone but slow and expensive to make, what are the chances that as DC and WB become closer-knit, we’ll see more of the direct-to-video animations that presumably make less actual dollars but a higher margin?

Diane Nelson: The DC Universe Animated made for videos which we do in cooperation with Warner Animation are very intentionally scheduled at 3-4 a year depending on whether or not there’s a theatrical tent pole release in a given year in which case we may choose to do four of them a year. That is, there can be opportunity for a fourth title when we have something as big as a theatrical tent pole. That is a very strategic plan; we have good reason to believe that fans have an appetite to support that and that makes real sense given the nature of the product and retail and the fan appetite. It wouldn’t necessarily bear out to suggest that that quantity of product is what we would do in any other business because we’ll need to look at each business on its own merit and determine what makes sense—how many titles can be done well—that’ll be a key part of what we figure out but the focus and the level of support that you see behind the DC Universe titles, we’ll bring a similar level of support to each of the businesses and mediums and then we’ll do what’s right for those particular businesses.

Salon: When John Lassiter took over Disney’s animation operations, he got a lot of credit from fans and critics for immediately halting their barrage of shabby, DTV sequels and putting a rule in place that sequels would be much more vetted than they had in the recent past. The idea was, diluting the brand with mediocre sequels might load the coffers today, but it diminishes the company image and makes it harder to have a truly remarkable success in the future. To what extent is deciding what DC properties DON’T belong in other media—or for that matter in regular publication—harder than deciding the ones that do?

Diane Nelson: I don’t think so, yet. I think when you have as many great characters and stories as we do within DC, clearly there’ll be situations where we have to make choices that a particular property doesn’t make sense for a particular medium but the nice thing is because we’re not just about theatrical films or just about made-for-videos, we’re actually looking to tell stories across each of the platforms that exist within Warner Brothers, there’s a lot of opportunity to tell different types of stories and that’s just opportunity. It certainly hasn’t occurred to me that there’s going to be a negative to that yet.

Salon: The last question – and it has to be, or else friends of mine would think I wasn’t myself—who would I have to bribe, and how much, to see a live-action “Booster Gold”?

Diane Nelson: [Laughs] You would have to bribe [name redacted], so I’ll leave that to the two of you!