Insights on DC's current state

[Mr. Hamrick]

Slightly off topic and responding to an earlier comment about movies and marketing, but I'd love to see more DC-inspired movies.  DC is more than just Superman and Batman, just as Marvel is more than X-Men, Fantastic Four, and Spider-Man.

The big problem is likely going to be brand-recognition among younger viewers/readers.  It seems like every little kid (and adult) on the planet knows -something- about Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man even if they've never read the comic books or seen the movies.  So those are naturals from a marketing perspective.

Justice League just doesn't have that same level of recognition, and that's a shame.  But Flash and Green Lantern are both well-known enough to pull off as movies, and I think they should.  I'd go see Flash just for the F/X, and they could take GL in a SciFi direction that would work.

Wonder Woman is also a major, known character but it's going to be hard to get past a preconception of Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman in the minds of guys my age and aside from that the level of recognition isn't going to be very high.  The only road to take with her, marketing-wise, is extreme butt-kicking babe with a lot of skin showing.  And that has its' own problems.

Another problem is that WW doesn't have a terribly marketable insignia to plaster all over items like the rest of the major characters (Big-S, Bat, Spider, Lightning Bolt, Green Lantern, etc), and you won't get it without breaking her "classic" look. 

The other real issue is that the really marketable heroes ALSO have VERY recognizable Rogues' Galleries.  DC needs to really hype some of the other heroes' bad guys and make them more marketable.  Think Batman and a number of bad guys come to mind, though Joker is at the top of the list.  Think Spider-Man and you get a long, long list of bad guys.  Think X-Men and you get Magneto, which explains why all of the X-Men movies have him in it.  Think Superman and the name Lex Luthor comes up, which is why (nearly) all of the Superman movies feature Lex Luthor as the bad guy.  Think Flash and you get... uh.  Okay, try Green Lantern.  Hm.  See what I mean?

have to agree with you and diagree with you on a few points here:

• Wonder Woman does have an emblem just not one that she wears on her actual uniform.  The WW emblem has been used to market some Wonder Woman merchidise in the past.  Here is a version of it: http://www.buckleshop.com/gt24_small.jpg
• Flash, Green Lantern, and Wonder Woman all have at least somewhat of a Rogue Gallery.  The Flash's even have formed a group called The Rogues. Flash has Captain Cold, Heatwave, Professor Zoom, The Reverse Flash, Trickster, Mirror Master, The Pied Piper to name a few.  Green Lantern has Sinestro, Hector Hammond, Star Sapphire, Eclipso, Effigy and Parralax amongst others.  Granted the only Wonder Woman ones I can think of are Cheetah, Ares, Circe, and Giganta. I do get your point but it may be stretching it a bit to say that none of them are memorable.  The bigger problem with The Flash's Rogue Gallery is that none of his villains could really sustain a movie as a one main villain of the film without looking cheesy and getting perhaps a bit trite without some liberties being taken with the character.  This would raise the ire of fanboys everywhere. 
• However, I think you're dead on over all.  That was my point in my last point.  DC doesn't do as much to market their characters as Marvel does and they should be.  This is one of the major short comings of DC as a company and it translates to their comic sales.   The "brand recognition" of a character or group of characters will help boost the sales.  It will also help sell merchandise and bring the company profit. 
• No, I don't think the Lynda Carter would be a hinderance to the preconception or image of Wonder Woman anymore than Adam West playing Batman.  I could go out and cast Wonder Woman TODAY if I was asked to and do a job on it that would make you forget Lynda Carter all together if the rest of the story elements were in place.
• And no, you don't have to make Wonder Woman the "extreme butt-kicking babe with a lot of skin showing".  You could argue that it would help.  It's defeinitely been a part of her costume over the years.  However, it can be gotten around.  As for the extreme butt-kicking part, Woman Woman should be shown as being a warrior and a fighter but also be shown as more than that.
• By that same regards, Green Latern would need to be an almost epic sci-fi military/space film on some levels, particularly with regards to FX.
• The Flash, while being FX laden, would be what? A crime drama?  Straight up action?  What?  That's one of the inherent problems with doing a Flash film.   

[BlueBard]

Have to agree with you and diagree with you on a few points here:

• Wonder Woman does have an emblem just not one that she wears on her actual uniform.  The WW emblem has been used to market some Wonder Woman merchidise in the past.  Here is a version of it: http://www.buckleshop.com/gt24_small.jpg
• Flash, Green Lantern, and Wonder Woman all have at least somewhat of a Rogue Gallery.  The Flash's even have formed a group called The Rogues. Flash has Captain Cold, Heatwave, Professor Zoom, The Reverse Flash, Trickster, Mirror Master, The Pied Piper to name a few.  Green Lantern has Sinestro, Hector Hammond, Star Sapphire, Eclipso, Effigy and Parralax amongst others.  Granted the only Wonder Woman ones I can think of are Cheetah, Ares, Circe, and Giganta. I do get your point but it may be stretching it a bit to say that none of them are memorable.  The bigger problem with The Flash's Rogue Gallery is that none of his villains could really sustain a movie as a one main villain of the film without looking cheesy and getting perhaps a bit trite without some liberties being taken with the character.  This would raise the ire of fanboys everywhere. 
• However, I think you're dead on over all.  That was my point in my last point.  DC doesn't do as much to market their characters as Marvel does and they should be.  This is one of the major short comings of DC as a company and it translates to their comic sales.   The "brand recognition" of a character or group of characters will help boost the sales.  It will also help sell merchandise and bring the company profit. 
• No, I don't think the Lynda Carter would be a hinderance to the preconception or image of Wonder Woman anymore than Adam West playing Batman.  I could go out and cast Wonder Woman TODAY if I was asked to and do a job on it that would make you forget Lynda Carter all together if the rest of the story elements were in place.
• And no, you don't have to make Wonder Woman the "extreme butt-kicking babe with a lot of skin showing".  You could argue that it would help.  It's defeinitely been a part of her costume over the years.  However, it can be gotten around.  As for the extreme butt-kicking part, Woman Woman should be shown as being a warrior and a fighter but also be shown as more than that.
• By that same regards, Green Latern would need to be an almost epic sci-fi military/space film on some levels, particularly with regards to FX.
• The Flash, while being FX laden, would be what? A crime drama?  Straight up action?  What?  That's one of the inherent problems with doing a Flash film.   

WW's Emblem... yes, now that I see a picture of it, I recognize it.  But back to my point that it isn't universally recognizable to anyone but comic book fans.

Rogues' Galleries... Never said they weren't memorable... I said recognizable, as in mass-market recognizable.  To work in a feature film, you need to have either an original villain with 'oomph', a villain that's immediately associated with the hero across generations of fans, or an original take on a villain that's less recognizable and really good casting.  (such as Ras Al Ghul/Liam Neeson in Batman Begins).

Of course, a recognizable Rogues' Gallery can also be a curse... like the Batman movies that threw in villains just for the heck of it with big-name stars badly cast and implausible storylines trying to ride along on fanboy recognition, if not fanboy appeal.

The 'formula' of super-hero films tends to involve origin fairly heavily, at least in the first film.  GL tends to suffer in that regard.  You have to pick one, first of all.  Hal, Guy, or Kyle?  Or do you blend the three?  Not insurmountable, you just have to make it  more interesting than an alien handing a guy a ring so you need a writer that 'gets' the character.

I'd love to know who you'd cast as Wonder Woman.  She has to be buff, built, beautiful and a good actress.  And let's not forget presence.

A Flash film... Hm.  Well, he's the Fastest Man Alive, literally lightning fast.  If you really take that to its' logical extension, then nobody can lay a glove on him mano y mano or it's not really believable.  Or you have to tone down the speed angle a tad.  The bad guys have to be really, really smart and it has to come down to Flash being smarter and more resourceful than the bad guys.  I'd say a blend of crime drama and scifi action would fit, with the right story.

[BlueBard]

Oh, for the record... I don't consider Lynda Carter's Wonder Woman a hindrance to a proper modern portrayal.  True the TV series was a bit on the campy side, but the woman herself was believable in the role, both in looks and in presence.  The problem will be finding someone that makes me forget all about Lynda Carter.  But then I don't suppose Hollywood is too worried about that.

[Mr. Hamrick]

The first thing I would do is cast Lynda Carter as Hippolyta.  Then, cast an unknown as Wonder Woman.  The biggest issue with casting Wonder Woman is that Warner Brother might be afraid of casting a "buff, built female" in the role because they'd be afraid of her being perceived as beautiful or not.  I'd start with some open auditions outside of LA and I would definitely look at some more European flavored actresses.  As for villains, I would use Circe and Artemis, with Artemis being betrayed by Circe in the end and indirectly helping Diana but not joining her.  You could reference Ares but only in that he is The God of War. 

To me, The GL film would be the easiest of the films to do.  Well, once you decided how to handle the issue of there being so many "recognizable Green Lanterns", it would be.  True, Hal was first but as many people probably know John Stewart from the series and Kyle Rayner from more recent comics, not to mention Alan Scott.  Guy Gardner would barely become a factor.

That would make The Flash the hardest of the films to make.

[the_ultimate_evil]

To me, The GL film would be the easiest of the films to do.  Well, once you decided how to handle the issue of there being so many "recognizable Green Lanterns", it would be.  True, Hal was first but as many people probably know John Stewart from the series and Kyle Rayner from more recent comics, not to mention Alan Scott.  Guy Gardner would barely become a factor.

on that note to me a gl movie should always focus on hal, at least for the set up his story works best as an origin with abin sur. at the end while saying goodbye to the mandatory love interest. have kilowog appear via the ring telling him he has to transport some new recruits to Oa, then having cameos of guy, kyle and john. then the sequal could have any of them or even better become an army type movie with them as a unit

[murs47]

even better become an army type movie with them as a unit

I absolutely love that idea  :wub:

[Panther_Gunn]

The first thing I would do is cast Lynda Carter as Hippolyta. 

To me, that's almost a no-brainer.  It's always nice when a new version of something makes a respectful nod to a previous *good* version of it, such as having Lou Ferigno in the Hulk movie, and most of the surviving cast members of Lost In Space appear in it's new movie (having Adam West, Burt Ward, or any other member of that series in any Batman movie would *not* be a good example).  It helps tie it in with some people, it tends to make the fanboys happy, it's good for trivia, and it can be good PR.

To me, The GL film would be the easiest of the films to do.  Well, once you decided how to handle the issue of there being so many "recognizable Green Lanterns", it would be.  True, Hal was first but as many people probably know John Stewart from the series and Kyle Rayner from more recent comics, not to mention Alan Scott.  Guy Gardner would barely become a factor.

I have to go with TUE on this one; The first movie should focus on Hal.  He's a *much* more recognizable Lantern (I doubt you could find a comic reader that *doesn't* know who he is, but knows of *other* Lanterns).  I think mashing them together would be a bad idea.  Any subsequent movies (one can hope  ^_^) could be about Hal, or another Lantern, or feature one or more other Lanterns, with Hal in the background somehow (mentor/leader position?)

That would make The Flash the hardest of the films to make.

I disagree.  I do agree that Flash has few, if no, regular foes that could carry a movie.  However, a couple easy options come to mind.  As much as I hate to mention it, it might be best to have a main villain directing one or two minor (from the movie's standpoint) villains.  There's no need to have a *huge* throwdown at the end.....he can always capture & incarcerate one or two on his way to tracking down the "mastermind".  As you pointed out, it would have to be an intelligence thing, which brings to mind Gorilla Grodd.  Granted, making the whole intelligent, talking, mentally powered gorilla idea work in the first movie, with no real intro, is a bit of an obstacle.  Another option could be Abra-Kadabra (I think that was the name of the "magician" from the future....can't be bothered to look it up at the moment).  The whole future aspect almost automatically implies access to vast amount of intel, as well as plenty of time (no pun intended) to gather info & plan the "gig".  Boomerang, Cold, and/or Mirror Master all come to mind to work with/for the former, while Professor Zoom almost seems an obvious choice for the latter, as well as giving Flash more of a physical challenge.  Whether to feature it as a Barry movie or a Wally movie is almost a toss-up at this point.  I think you'd get about 50/50 recognition with either one.  But I think the whole "speed force" thing should be left out, at least at first......it's maybe a bit too much to ask casual movie goers to absorb some sort of Unified Theory of Speedsters.  ;)

[MJB]

While I have not enjoyed it when DC has killed off characters for no reason, it is in my opinion, that DC has been doing a better job this past year.

-MJB

[daglob]

The first thing I would do is cast Lynda Carter as Hippolyta. 

To me, that's almost a no-brainer.  It's always nice when a new version of something makes a respectful nod to a previous *good* version of it, such as having Lou Ferigno in the Hulk movie, and most of the surviving cast members of Lost In Space appear in it's new movie (having Adam West, Burt Ward, or any other member of that series in any Batman movie would *not* be a good example).  It helps tie it in with some people, it tends to make the fanboys happy, it's good for trivia, and it can be good PR.

I don't have a problem with the voices in the Batman animated series.

[Revenant]

Well Amazons Attack is really striving to bring DC's average down.  Sinestro Corps seems all right, but AA was a steaming pile.

[Mystik]

my two cents:

lets just forget about AA and prepare ourselves for gail Simone's run

looks like the real aquaman is coming back :)

today's titans was good {now if they could just bring back conner )

I have faith in Mc Duffie :thumbup:

I hope everybody dies in titans east special (except cyborg )

give me back my batgirl (cassie)

but overall I things are finally getting better

[thanoson]

Didn't Blade start the new trend of comic movies? And how many people do you think heard of Marvel Comics Blade before that movie? It was a very well done movie which let word of mouth get around to everyone.

[Deaths Jester]

Alright...I'm going to jump on the board here with a bit of history that might be consiered in the vein of this thread.  If one can remember back to teh Golden Age of Comics, ye'll notice that DC's original Batman carried a gun and often slaughtered his villians in less than two or three episodes, Superman was known to be a racist and slightly less than stable mentally, the Joker was a true homicidal killer before becoming a clown, and Wonder Woman usually was just a reason to wrap women in ropes.  As for Marvel, Captain America and Bucky often slaughtered random Nazis with machine guns, Namor drowned dozens with water and the Human Torch burned criminals to death.  So really the idea of Dr Light as a rapist, Maxwell Lord as a sociopath and Superboy as a nut job is really nothing new.  Just a retread of the old when ye really get down to it on all sides.  Okay...that's my history lesson and all I will say on DC and Marvel anymore...because if I say more...well...it would be a major rant that would piss half of everyone off!

[JKCarrier]

DC's original Batman carried a gun and often slaughtered his villians

I can think of exactly 3 golden age stories where Batman uses a gun:
Against vampires (Detective #32)
To destroy a death-ray machine (Detective #33)
Against giant mutants (Batman #1)
Batman does kill a number of enemies in the first year or two, but every example I can recall is clearly a case of self-defense, rather than "slaughter".

Superman was known to be a racist and slightly less than stable mentally

I would like to see a citation on that one. It's true that a lot of comics had an unfortunate tendency to demonize the Japanese during World War II.

Your other examples are more-or-less true, though somewhat hyperbolic. In any event, I'm not sure how the existence of sadism and racism in some '40s comics somehow excuses similar excesses in the 21st century.

[doctorchallenger]

Superman #1, he yanks a bad guy out of his plane and pitches him over the horizon. I don't know if you can consider him as unstable because of this, but he certainly acted as though he was above the law. he was much more of a Nietzschean vision of the Ubermensch in his early appearences.  This makes sense as Seigel was very influenced by the work of Philip Wylie. as far as racism, I don't know if could be considered any more or less racist then the white mainstream of American thought at the time.  You have to remember that the most positive image of any non-caucasian was Crimson Avenger's side kick, Wing or the Blackhawk's Chop-Chop.  There is a Slam Bradley story I've seen by Seigel and Schuster where Slam is tossing around a bunch of Chinese, portrayed in very stereotypical "coolie" garb.  I don't know if there were similar stories in Superman. 

The comics came under criticism very early, way before Fredric Wertham jumped on board, and the industry tempered the more "Nietzschean" elements by the time of the start of the war. This was particularly true of DC, because the owner Harry Donenfeld wanted to distance DC from his pulp business which was particularly lurid and under heavy criticism.  True the industry tended to de-humanize the Japanese more then the Germans or Italians, but this too was largely consistant with the tenor of the times.  Not that it makes it right.

For a good account, I highly recommend Gerard Jones' Men of Tomorrow.

[Uncle Yuan]

True the industry tended to de-humanize the Japanese more then the Germans or Italians, but this too was largely consistant with the tenor of the times.  Not that it makes it right.

I've always attributed this to factors.  One: As white European-Americans we identified culturally much more closely with Germans, Italians, what-have-you, while the Japanese where different enough for the xenophobia to set in that much easier.  (This has already been eluded to.)  Secondly, I think that because the Japanese where more different "racially" it made them much easier to characterize.  Not that the other Axis powers didn't get their fair share of this too, but not generally to the same extent.

[zuludelta]

One thing that's bothering me with the current DC direction is how much they've mishandled the Wildstorm imprint. The supposed "relaunch" is horrible... Wetworks is slated to be canceled along with the Christos Gage-penned Stormwatch:PHD and the WildCATs and Authority relaunches have been a joke (it's going to be a year before we see the second issues of what were supposed to be bimonthly comics in the first place!) and they lost their best-selling Wildstorm book, Garth Ennis' and Darick Robertson's The Boys, to rival publisher Dynamite Press because DC higher-ups couldn't stomach a little hard-edged satire and parody going their way. I can understand canceling books due to low sales, but Wetworks and Stormwatch:PHD weren't really given a chance because DC is somehow allergic to promoting DC/Wildstorm books, even within the DCU and Vertigo lines, while on the other hand, multiple full-page ads of DC's latest event books clutter the confines of what few Wildstorm books get published.

They've also recently fired (for unclear and dubious reasons) line editor Scott Dunbier (who's been with WS since the Image Comics days, a huge creators' rights advocate, and all-around nice guy), the guy who engineered the agreement which allowed for the carrying over of Alan Moore's America's Best Comics titles after the DC/Wildstorm merger, even after Moore had sworn never to produce anything for DC again. It just seems that DC is content to cut all ties with the old "independent" Wildstorm and let all these properties languish while they continue to strip the Wildstorm books of anything that made them unique and appealing and shoehorn the Wildstorm universe into their contrived multiverse event nonsense. 

[lugaru]

True the industry tended to de-humanize the Japanese more then the Germans or Italians, but this too was largely consistant with the tenor of the times.  Not that it makes it right.

I've always attributed this to factors.  One: As white European-Americans we identified culturally much more closely with Germans, Italians, what-have-you, while the Japanese where different enough for the xenophobia to set in that much easier.  (This has already been eluded to.)  Secondly, I think that because the Japanese where more different "racially" it made them much easier to characterize.  Not that the other Axis powers didn't get their fair share of this too, but not generally to the same extent.

That pretty much sums up my prespective on the subject too. And yeah, 'superman' was involved in some pretty racist issues according to the covers galleries I've seen but that has little to do with supes and a lot to do with the times. Jaysus, I've seen some Popeye cartoons (anti-japanese again, of course) that made me blanch.

ZULU: I always considered that one of the coolest things (besides vertigo) that DC had going for it was wildstorm. Ugh, if they integrate it (some choice of words after the racism talk, I know) into their mainstream continuity the same thing will happen as when they purchased milestone. Are any of those caracters still around? And in the sense of fairness, the same could be said for Marvel and Malibu comics.

[bredon7777]

Is that why we haven't seen the last issue of Planetary yet?

[zuludelta]

ZULU: I always considered that one of the coolest things (besides vertigo) that DC had going for it was wildstorm. Ugh, if they integrate it (some choice of words after the racism talk, I know) into their mainstream continuity the same thing will happen as when they purchased milestone.

They've already integrated the Wildstorm Universe into the multiverse... the whole point of the Captain Atom: Armageddon mini-series was to show that the Wildstorm characters inhabited just another world in the DC multiverse (well, that and to show that DC's "second-class Superman" could beat the stuffing out of the strongest Wildstorm characters... really, the whole point of it all seemed to be to neuter the Wildstorm characters and show how much cooler and more powerful the DC characters are). 

And in the sense of fairness, the same could be said for Marvel and Malibu comics.

I don't think you can realistically compare the DC/Wildstorm situation with Marvel's acquisition of the Malibu characters. It was pretty clear back then that Marvel didn't have any real plans to push Malibu, they were just after the top-secret "Malibu colouring process" technology (which, as far as i can tell, was just a a couple of early Photoshop nerds, before digital colouring became the industry standard  :lol:). DC, at least for the first couple of years after their acquisition of Wildstorm, looked like they were setting it up as a venue for intelligent mature-readers superhero stories (what with The Authority, Deep Sleeper, WildCATs 3.0, etc.)

Is that why we haven't seen the last issue of Planetary yet?

Maybe. Or it could just be because Ellis is taking his sweet time with it.