Dan Didio, DC Comics, Reboots and what everyone seems to be missing

Is there a DC Comics conspiracy? Book delays, reboots called anything but reboots and characters changing skin colour and sex.

Look it is not a conspiracy. It is business.  Imagine you are DC comics which has hundreds of characters and with changing copyright laws, creators rights and money hungry creators' estates out there what do you do?

The Siegel and Shuster saga in which DC lost opened up a warehouse full of nightmares. So, the New Gods (created by Jack Kirby) were killed off. That left a very bad taste in the mouths of many fans.  Don't worry the New Unconnected To Kirby Gods are here! 

Book delays may well be down to more in-house continuity clean ups and other going on -check out the Howlermouse video:

Companies want properties (and that is all the characters are to them -property) that can earn the business money and not result in long legal cases costing high legal fees and the possibility of out of court settlements and restricted use of a character.

In the old days a quick "You'll never work in comics again!" snapped by a publisher shut up any creator since the publishers all knew each other and played golf together or had lunches.

I could put my comic fan hat on and say "DC Comics are a bunch o' bastards who have ruined the characters!"

However, if I put the publisher hat on I smile "Smart move".

Fans who have been around a long time have seen the changes -I've been reading Marvel Comics since the 1960's so if I look back to the 1980s when Jim Shooter made it great again and then look at the company now I am really stumped and ask "WTF is going on??"

Dan Didio is peeved that people buy more of the reprint books than new? No, that is still money coming in. The company needs to simply take a look at what it is producing when it comes to new books.

Peter Cannon:The Thunderbolt appeared briefly in DC Comic and there was a 12 issue series however, creator Pete Morisi owned the rights and since his death in 2003 his family estate have owned the rights and now the character is being used with a "humorous twist". But there was a lot of talk at the time that DC had the character rights following the Charlton Comics sell off. Apparently Morisi was not happy with something going on at DC and refused to sell his rights to the character.

It is important to note that the 1980s "Charlton sell off of character" was not a sell off of characters. 

In the 1980s, Charlton material was auctioned off and John Lustig managed to grab a chunk of the Romance strips, which he has re-packaged over the years and the other prominent name amongst the purchasers was Roger Broughton who, again, reprinted much Charlton Horror and ACG material under his A +  logo.

I contacted Robin Snyder who had been involved in the sell off and he responded:

“You have found me, Terry,

I did indeed sell the various properties for Charlton, stats, negs, titles and/or any and all rights.

  A few (such as various ghost stories and Killjoy) went to Steve Ditko and me. Some westerns went to Bill Black. Roger Broughton purchased the lion’s share of the material for reprint only. 

There were others but who remembers?
Good luck,
Robin”

Everyone else I contacted who had been involved with Charlton wanted nothing to do with confirming facts and one even responded "My hands are clean. I had no part in selling anything!" You might wonder why everyone kept quiet...well, Charlton did have less than honest people involved ("the Mob").

Rather as with British comics it is possible that there was a nod, a wink and some cash under the table to seal the DC Comics purchase. However, there was plenty of room for creators or their estates to make a claim for money.

Originally the Question (created by Steve Ditko) was news reporter Vic Sage However, after the events of the 2006–2007 miniseries 52, Sage's protégé Renee Montoya took up his mantle and became his successor. Following the DC relaunch The New 52, Sage is reintroduced as a government agent. It needs to be pointed out that DC apologised to fans for some of the things they did with that series (koff koff "Superman").

Hey, for all of those who like to push the warped view "Ditko was ripped off by Marvel" ask how much Ditko was getting from DC for The Hawk and The Dove, The Question, Captain Atom and so on. Nothing

.

Mentioning the character Captain Atom notice how he originally appeared how Ditko drew his later version but then became a walking bomb in his own series and Justice League -even a new-ish origin, and I'll be honest and tell you after that original DC series the character went down the hole.

Then we have Judo Master, killed off in Crisis on Infinite Earths and there have been two rebooted versions since then.

The Blue Beetle was a Fox and Holyoke Comics' character that Ditko, under the new owners (Charlton), redesigned for the 1960s version. I enjoyed the original DC series but the character  got so messed up and killing him off to reboot into a new version.....

It goes on and  on and you can see where this is going.

Incidentally, there was a character called Ozymandias in the old Gold Key comics.  Also, Ditko is often cited as a victim with his Captain Atom character being ripped off by others.  Rather like Ditko may have come up with the Spider-Man costume based on a fancy dress outfit (designed by Jack Kirby) how about the February, 1946, Sparks Comics title Atoman....ahem..nice costume....

This is nothing new. 

Marvel and its incompetent editors think that they must get Millennial readers in because the young are hip, cool and whatever.  They completely lost sight of what Stan Lee did to build the Marvel Comics empire. There was no insulting of fans or reboots just good stories and good art -Millennials will not be familiar with all of this so whatever Marvel does they think is standard and the norm.  That is why Marvel insults and distances itself from the old Marvelites.

You reap what you sow.

What I think DC needs to do to draw in more readers is simple.  However, as DC Comics are never going to read this or employ me or even pay me if they did read my "plan", I'll keep that to myself.

It is very simple but editors and publishers seem to not see what they need to do.

Here endeth the ramble.