Last year, we had some ideas about how Valiant, DC, and Marvel could improve their comics. Were we listened to? Were we ignored? We asked last year’s contributors to assess the situation by looking back at what they suggested and following up with us. Let’s go!
James Johnston
Please Stop
You didn’t stop Marvel. You couldn’t. All around me are crossovers for this and that. “Civil War II” is marching on (I think?!) you made “Inhumans vs. X-Men” to explain to your fans why it’s cool that your equivalent of Poochy was killing off the X-Men. You’ve gone mad, Marvel. Please, calm down.
Punisher 2099
Ongoing series or bust, baby!!!
Don’t Cast a White Iron Fist
Whoops!!! You cast a dude from Game of Thrones and now Danny Rand looks like the really mean guy in my improv group.
Push Your Current Talent To The Moon
This bullet point was mostly a response to Marvel having Bendis helm the company’s big crossover again and considering that “Civil War II” still has one more issue left I’m calling this a bust. Can’t wait for Chip Zdarsky to write “Infinity Gauntlet III” In 2019 though.
Zach Wilkerson
Be bold with the Star Wars line.
Eh…sort of? “Darth Vader” took some big turns, even spinning off into a new book, but the main “Star Wars” title and even “Poe Dameron” play it safe in my opinion. The upcoming Yoda arc in “Star Wars” sounds very promising though.
Ken Godberson III:
Enough of this $4.99 First Issue Nonsense: Heh. Heheheh. Kehahahahahahaha! Ahahahahahaha! HA HA HAAAAAAAAAAA!
Paul Lai:
Free Lemire
I’ve been pleasantly surprised by Lemire’s large Marvel body of work. Some of it lacks Lemire’s sharpness because it’s mired in Marvel events (or is one, as in the case of IvX), but I’ve still enjoyed reading those. But the weirdness of Moon Knight, the somber Old Man Logan, and even the terribly depressing Terrigen decimation of Mutants has all been tinged with trademark Lemire tones, and I for one remain on board. Now when will we have the EsseX County crossover?
Brian Salvatore:
Get back to what made you great
Last year, I wanted Marvel to go back to publishing books that were more relatable, getting back to their roots as the comics that we outcasts could see ourselves in. They’ve made Cap a Nazi, so I’d say they done fucked this up even worse.
Ken Godberson III
Last year, I made a special list for Santa Valiant in the hopes that I could get distracted from the oncoming despair of another year rearing it’s ugly, demagog-riddled, celebrity-killing head. Now we’re going to take a look at that list and see just how close to an all-seeing prophet I am, or whether this was a “Be Careful What You Wish For” scenario.
A Generation Zero Ongoing: Well, nothing like hitting the ball as soon as I got to the plate. Valiant did indeed launch a Generation Zero ongoing, with one of my favorite writers at their publisher, Fred Van Lente. So, was it a Grand Slam? Ehhhh, more like a Double (Baseball Metaphors!) While I did and do enjoy it, it wasn’t the ultra awesome book I wanted it to be, but it does have potential. The more and more it finally gets past introducing Keisha and really gets into the heads of these teens, the better. Also, if not one of them is revealed to be queer by the book’s end I will be so mad.
Livewire: Siiiiiiiiigh. This is a real shame. I was hoping for at the very least a mini-series starring Amanda McKee. However, not only did we not get that, but her appearances in the Valiant Universe have been sparring at best. This really needs to be remedied because she is such a great character that, like Gen Zero, is ripe with potential.
More Information on Valiant Cinematic Universe: Welll… we now know that Harbinger has been moved up and will be releasing before Bloodshot. Well, we do have that Ninjak web-series with Michael Rowe and Jason David Frank! That’s live-action so I’m counting it!
Continued belowEasy on the “Retailer Incentive Series” Idea: Well, this is something that is so odd with them. No, they did not decide to do another price-bloated Retailer Incentive Series like “Book of Death: Legend of the Geomancer”, but some of Valiant’s gimmicks feel so archaic. For example, they have something going on right now where if you pre-order issues #1-4 of “Harbinger Renegades” you’ll get the zero issue of the forthcoming “Harbinger Wars II” (Ugh) event, which won’t be sold in stores. I get needing to have pre-orders, but this still just continues to feed into that Comic-Shop Only, Diamond-Bloated, “Wednesday Warrior” mentality that comics needs to get out of!
Keeping Up With That “Easy to Get Into” Connectivity: Well, you’ll be happy to know that Valiant still continue to make their books accessible. I may have problems with “4001 A.D.” and “Bloodshot U.S.A.” not being “Rai vol. 4” and “Bloodshot Reborn vol. 5” respectively, but you can’t deny it gets people on those books. Plus you have the more stand-alone fare like “Britannia” and the recent “Savage”, Valiant still have this one down pat.
Zach Wilkerrson
Give Batman a Rest, build up the rest of the line.
This actually sort of happened. While Batman is still front and center (getting his own Justice League, no less) the overall line is much healthier under Rebirth than it’s been in ages. The Superman books are especially well off. Add in the great diversity of Young Animal and I’d say DC made good on this wish.
James Johnston:
Put Tom King on Everything
The weirdness of his current “Batman” run aside, I’m still sticking with this.
Ride Out the Bat Status Quo A Little More
DC actually did this pretty significantly in 2016, having the whole Jim Gordon in a Batman Titanfall suit go on for about as long as everyone expected. Bruce came back from whatever he came back from and made for a pretty significant finale for Snyder’s “Batman” run the same way “Batman and Robin Must Die” was a send-off for Grant Morrison being the head of the Batman line. Good stuff!
Hire Edgar Wright
This was a strong no.
More Prez
“Prez” got cancelled but we got one last back-up in that weird “Catwoman Election Special” so I’m chalking this up as a W.
Paul Lai
Embrace Your West Coast Flavor
Looking back on my 2015 DC Wishlist, first I’m embarrassed by my pretentious and inscrutable writing. But through my thicket of puns and allusions, I essentially asked DC to embrace its new California Cool and to be playful, diverse, and proud of its heritage. Improbably high degree of difficulty? Yes.
Did DC succeed? In a year when my Warriors dropped a 3-1 to Cleveland, my vote was swallowed by the electoral college, and my Multiversity writing ceded to personal trials, one of the rare, shocking bright spots of the year was DC’s Rebirth. The exuberance of Gleason’s Jonathan Kent, Orlando and Ching’s Kara Zor-El, and Williamson and Di Giandomenico’s Barry. The emergence or elevation of Kate Kane, Kenan Kong, Jessica Cruz, and Clayface. (Yes, Clayface!) The thick legacies of Wonder Woman and Wallies West and the forecasted return of The Wild Storm. Somehow Geoff, Dan, Jim, and a stable of young and old (and some far too long, but that’s another subject) managed to pump new blood into storied mythology, and continues to overtake the sales edge (and my own pull list) from their main rival, to everyone’s surprise.
I’m stunned. And delighted. “Keep it rockin’… keep it rockin’….”
Brian Salvatore:
A Shazam Ongoing
Nope. I learned my lesson this year, and only asked for an ongoing with Shazam in it, rather than his own title. Let’s hope.
A Superman Weekly
I’m calling this a tie, because while we don’t have a Superman weekly, we do have two twice monthly Superman titles, so you get a Superman story weekly. But, “Action Comics” is the warmed over corpse of 90’s comics, so that’s not really fair, but depending how you read this, I either got what I asked for, or got damn close.
Continued belowTrust in your creators
This is a hard one to actually judge, as on one hand, the twice-monthly shipping schedule would seem to indicate an even stricter editorial mandate on the books. But the results don’t look like that at all – we are seeing books with far more creator residue on them than we were getting a year ago. There’s no denying that, say, Tom King’s “Batman” is coming from his own ideas, and not from an editorial edict.
But, then again, maybe they’re just better at hiding it. I’m calling this a qualified win.
A Supergirl ongoing
An unqualified win! With Steve Orlando on it, to boot.
Vince Ostrowski
Publish a Weekly Comic that doesn’t have anything to do with Batman:
No luck on this one, but I have a feeling we’re not done with the concept of the weekly event just yet. Those were pretty high selling books for DC and they’re able to cover a lot of character ground. I’m hopeful an announcement for a weekly event book is on the way at some point in 2017.
Fix the Legion of Super-Heroes, dammit:
It’s clearly coming, as teases in both “DC Universe Rebirth” #1 and Tom King’s “Batman” have shown. Whether they’re “fixed” or not will be the thing to keep an eye on. They’re coming back sooner or later though, and I couldn’t be more excited.
Don’t give up on DCYou style comic books
I’m delighted to say that even the post-Rebirth DC Comics landscape found room for books like “Deadman: Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love”, “Midnighter and Apollo”, and several other titles that didn’t carry the Rebirth banner, but were nonetheless allowed to come out from DC’s main publishing line. I don’t know whether these were holdovers from pre-Rebirth or not, but even if they were, DC still put out the ‘Young Animal’ books, which seem like a more mature, weirder extension of the general aim of DCYou. In any case, they scratch similar itches. Well done, DC – you didn’t let Rebirth completely dominate your attention.
Ken Godberson III
Let Greg Pak Revitalize “Teen Titans”: Well. I got three issues. They weren’t bad I guess. I’m just going to go in the corner and sigh.
Orlando and Kolins “Shazam”: You have failed this city.
