Losing My Religion? AKA "The Newest DCU - Connecting a Few Dots"

[dewline]

I've been trying to cobble a few thoughts together over the last month or so since learning of the plans for DCU version 4.0. This hasn't been easy to do just based on the emotional attachments and biases tied to them alone. Add in the heat wave - heat dome? - currently in progress, as well as other concerns...well.

So bear with me a while here. Because if this works, it's gonna read like Marshall McLuhan, and if it doesn't, it'll end up in a slush pile rotting somewhere.

Right.

I've discussed this with james_nicoll, liabrown, fajrdrako in a couple of different places, and a few others. The misgivings are several.

The complaint posted the other day about the announced plan to retcon away Lois and Clark's marriage is at once the most personal and the least important of the issues that concern me(but we'll address some of those concerns later - if not in this post, then elsewhere later - anyway).

The others?

We can start with the reports of the "target audience" from DC's retailer conferences. Male, 18 to 34. If they get anyone outside of that range, it's gravy but it seems as if they're not really going to go chasing either females in general or anyone over 34, whatever gender they identify as. And as radargrrl and several others - particularly fans of the Milestone Media characters currently being rented by DC - will rightly remind us all, that gender identification matter isn't strictly "binary male/female" either.

And then we have this lady showing up at San Diego this weekend. The treatment she's getting...is disturbing, to put it mildly. (Thanks to kadymae and tartysuz for the heads-up about kyrax2's adventures at SDCC!)

Back to the age issue. Some of you recall the installment of Terry O'Reilly's Age of Persuasion on CBC Radio One on ageism in advertising linked here a while back, right?

Good.

Because it's still relevant, directly so. The matter of aiming your marketing campaign at where the money is going to be over the next two to four decades is key here. O'Reilly hits the key points in his presentation better than I can, so you're strongly advised to listen to it carefully if you haven't already.

Culturally...it seems to these eyes of mine that until now the DC Universe has evolved - partly because of its editorial choices, sometimes despite those choices - into what Mark Waid called via Orion's tongue in Kingdom Come "a tale of generations". Multiple generations, reading the same stories and finding their own meanings in the tales.

Several of the titles seem to have been set up with "Roll Back the Clock Syndrome" to be satisfied. Superman and Action, Batgirl as well. And to defy this understanding of the generations in the bargain.

We should've seen the resurrections of Hal Jordan and Barry Allen, and the reversion of several other characters' IDs from public to secret again - look at Barry and Hal again, as well as Wally West, Ollie Queen, Dinah Lance, Roy Harper, and Karen Starr in particular - as symptoms of things to come. (And several of us did in fact see it.) I'm as much a nostalgia fan as anyone, as evidenced by my being hooked on All-Star Squadron back in the days before the first Crisis. But these trends were troubling.

We should have seen bigger things coming.

There's also the matter of the Golden Age characters. Their absence is disturbing as well. I wonder if it's linked to the fuss in the courtrooms over Superman with the Siegel and Shuster estates in the last few years. Yes, I do think it matters if we lose Dr. Occult or Liberty Belle, Phantom Lady or even the Jester. And there's likely more obscure characters I'm forgetting that I'd prefer to remember and be re-introduced to. You can thank or blame Roy Thomas and Jerry Ordway for that.

Yes, it's understood that not all the creators or their estates - if any - can be tracked down for the necessary legal paperwork. Still and all...it matters.

So not quite concluded or finished: I may walk away from DC for a while. I'm not sure yet if it's to be a complete walkaway or if I pick specific titles to support for specific reasons.

pauliatchy, I'm not sure if this addresses any of your counter-arguments. But it is a fair and rambling statement of where my thinking is.

To be continued...one way or another.

Comments

[shanejayell.livejournal.com]

Yeah.

I just... I thought DC was SMARTER than this, honestly. They're riding a twisted nostalgia trip to bring back the silver age, all 'repackaged and new.'

And for whatever reason are totally ignoring female readers and anyone outside their target market. Not to mention actively heaping mockery on anyone asking 'What about the girls?'

At this point I'm wavering between buying one or two books, and being so pissed at DC that I want to dump 'em ALL. Way to go, DC.

[dewline.livejournal.com]

You're not alone in that thinking about DC's organizational smarts. I've got no direct attachment to the Silver Age either, although a lot of what I've been reading certainly has roots reaching back to that era.

You're also not alone in your wavering.