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!
Jake Hill: Even more inter-connectivity, more characters getting ongoings, encyclopedia of the Valiant Universe
Instead of more connections between books, Valiant has opted for a low continuity approach, with series that are easy to jump into- and jump off of. I know that the number of Valiant books I’ve read has decreased since last year. With all of the renumberings and retoolings of ongoing series, Valiant has felt more like one of the big two than ever. It’s harder to pick a few characters and to stick with them. And without a comprehensive guidebook, readers have to rely on the unofficial wiki to answer questions. All that said, I’m optimistic about “Incursion,” which looks to follow up on 2014’s “The Valiant.” That’s some good superhero continuity.
Michael Mazzacane: More diversity on, and especially behind, the page, use your size to experiment, not everything has to be told in 4 issues
Man, my experience with Valiant over the year has been a rollercoaster ride. It started out high with the continued adventures of Bloodshot under the pen of Jeff Lemire, Christos Gage’s turn with Ninja-K was a pulpy change of pace that worked its way through spy fiction. And then Valiant was bought out by DMG entertainment followed by the shift from a generally interesting sounding way to tell “Harbinger Wars 2” too a fine, but standard, publishing model. My interest plummeted. Still the pendulum continues to swing and things are ending on a somewhat up note. Lemire finished off “Bloodshot: Salvation,” Jody Houser started another “Faith” miniseries. and while Valiant didn’t hit all of my wishes it landed on the important ones.
Needless to say Valiant has gone through a lot of changes this year with the departure of Dinesh Shamdasani and Warren Simons as part of the buyout, along with writer Eric Heisserer. Joe Illidge moved on from Lion Forge to Executive Editor of Valiant Entertainment, replacing Warren Simons. Vitya Ayala is writing an ongoing “Livewire” series, which are two things I didn’t imagine would be a thing last year. Ayala appears to be a writer on the cusp of breaking big in mainstream comics after several creator owned series percolated in the background. Tini Howard is writing a “War-Monger” mini. I hated the first issue but Kevin Grevioux is writing, in some way, the new “Bloodshot” series. Valiant is a small publishers on and off the page. I don’t have the strict numbers, and numbers aren’t the only way you should measure this sorta thing, but this year feels like a shift toward recognizing greater diversity on and off the page.
My other two hopes, for more experiments and break in the 4 issue cycle, didn’t really happen. They did sorta finally release that Ninja-K webseries briefly, that was indeed an experiment. “Harbinger Wars 2” went from a double sized three issue mini with dueling creative teams too a standard six with only one. With their new owners I don’t expect much of a shift in the way Valiant publishes comics, sadly. While doing consistent miniseries has generated a revolving spotlight, it has led to points where I’ve pretty much dropped the publisher entirely. Playing small makes business sense, but it also limits what you offer the marketplace. The direct market may, hopefully, just be flat this year, but it isn’t where the excitement or new fans are. Doing something explicitly aimed at the book space or partnership with Comixology would be more interesting than yet another “Bloodshot” series.
2018 was a tumultuous year, but the early signs of what Joe Illidge is doing coming out of it have me cautiously optimistic in a way I wasn’t at the start of things.
Brian Salvatore: Magic! Ghosts!, let Dysart do his thing
I’m saying these are both more wins than losses, but neither is a slam dunk. Dysart is returning soon, so that’s good, but I wanted it in 2018, not in March 2019. As for the magic and ghosts, “Shadowman” is back, so that’s a start.
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Christopher Chiu-Tabet: Stop deferring to IDW, make your prestige shows episodic
Like Laura as Wolverine, Marvel just went completely in the other direction regarding our advice to stop outsourcing their all-ages books to IDW. And you know what? I’m completely fine with that: Marvel acknowledged they’re not good at selling kids’ books, and IDW must be happy overseeing their own Marvel superhero books. If they’re happy, who am I to disagree? It’s great these books are available as alternatives to more adult-aimed books like “Black Panther,” and it’s not like Marvel have completely given up, given “Ms. Marvel” and “Unbeatable Squirrel Girl” are still in rude health.
It was probably too late for Marvel TV to take their shows into less of an extended movie format, but to their credit they trimmed season 2 of Iron Fist to ten episodes, and were planning to do the same for Luke Cage season 3 before it too was canceled. Ultimately, the cancellation of both shows is a sad reminder that as lengthy as their shows felt, we didn’t really get enough adventures with these characters.
Jake Hill: Pick a status quo and stick with it, keep Laura Kinney as Wolverine, hire exciting independent comic writers
Well, Laura Kinney is no longer Wolverine, so that’s one thing Marvel got wrong. Seriously, why would she go back to using the X-23 codename? Consider all the trauma associated with it. Maybe she needs an animal codename like the rest of her family. Honey Badger is taken. Ermine? Polecat? Something better than that?
In terms of having a consistent status quo, Marvel has avoided world-shattering events this year, but that’s only because they’ve segregated their events to a couple of books. Keeping “Infinity War” to a small corner of space is better than whatever was happening in “Secret Empire,” but it doesn’t make the universe feel coherent. They’ve gone back to allowing creator’s relative freedom within their book, and I suppose that’s a good thing.
Hiring has continued to look to non-comics, but in truth there were not a lot of high profile hires this year. Saladin Ahmed continued to do great work; he came from novels. Rainbow Rowell is doing a great job on “Runaways,” she came from novels. Chip Zdarsky and Kelly Thompson signed exclusive contracts- both are excellent gets! But if CB Cebulski has one great talent to offer, it’s finding new voices, and as of yet there hasn’t been a lot of that going on over at the house of ideas.
Elias Rosner: “ROM” returns, more Legacy one-shots, upending the entire business model, imprint yourself, Miracle Man
Well, I never expected much to come of “ROM” from Marvel and I got exactly what I expected. It’s a shame because I think with the return of Darkhawk and other obscure Marvel cosmic characters, this would fit right in and with the rising popularity of mech comics again (“Robotech,” “Mech Cadet Yu,”) they’d find themselves in good company. Heck, they’re sharing their all-ages comics with IDW, who owns the rights to ROM at the moment, so this would be the perfect opportunity to iron out those decade’s old rights issues. They could even have IDW print the collected editions. It’d be weird but with no-current ongoing ROM series or mini-series from IDW, there’s no risk of competing products.
On the one-shots side, Marvel has simultaneously doubled down on them and, somehow, turned all of them into events or made them tie-ins only. I don’t. . .Marvel, what are you doing? Of the non-tie-ins (yes, that includes “Damnation” and whatever Donny Cates has doing with Thanos,) we had the five “X-men Black,” issues, “Avengers Halloween Special,” “Journey Into Mystery: The Birth of Krakoa,” the six “What if?” issues, “Marvel Zombie” #1, and, technically “Silver Surfer Annual” seeing as Slott’s series ended a year ago and there’s not rumbling for another and yes, I did go through the names of every series published in 2018 so far to compile this list. It’s not the greatest mix but having a unified theme to the various one-shots, such as the temporary rebirth of “What if?” and a mutant “villains” themed one-shot series (I’m ignoring the pointless backups,) is a smart move for actually keeping sales up; it just doesn’t play to the freedom of said one-shots and were picked for some very safe properties.
Continued belowMarvel also fully lost their Icon imprint and, perhaps, their best Icon properties with Bendis’ move to DC. I think it’s safe to say, with their “Marvel Knights” celebration mini-series and not a relaunch of the imprint and their IDW contract, that Marvel won’t be making any imprints anytime soon. Which really, really sucks. In better news, Gaiman and Buckingham’s “Miracleman” is finally (hopefully) coming back in 2019 now that the unknown about legal hurdles have been crossed. Seriously Marvel, would it have killed you to have said something earlier?
Finally, did anyone expect Marvel to actually change it’s business model or stop putting out big, multi-tie-in laden event comics? ‘Nuff said.
Justin Beeson: Tell more standalone stories, cool it on the costume updates
I think the first counts as a wish fulfilled. Marvel has had several stand-alone arcs between their various ongoings, event books, and limited series that don’t need a ton of context to read and enjoy. Some of the standout ones from the past year that I personally read include the runs of “Iceman” and “Black Bolt,” as well as ‘ Thanos, Vol. 3: Thanos Wins,’ ‘Doctor Strange by Donny Cates, Vol. 1: God of Magic,’ ‘Phoenix Resurrection: The Return of Jean Grey,’ ‘Jessica Jones: Blind Spot,’ and ‘Multiple Man: It All Makes Sense in the End.’
I think Marvel can continue to try and find a balance between their sprawling, intertwining, continuity-dependent books, and nice, trade-targeted stories. (Although maybe stop with the surprise limited series that get initially announced as ongoings.)
As for the second, it looks like I’ll be wishing for this again next year. I haven’t paid strict attention to this across the whole line, but I know Spider-Man at one point had different costumes depending on what book he was in, and the original design is one of the most iconic of all time and doesn’t need to be touched. Ever. On the X-Men side of Marvel, those books have been relaunched for the seemingly 10th time so far this year, and with each one of those (and subsequent team divisions) came new costumes.
Kate Kosturski: Lower prices, continue to allow Sina Grace the freedom to tell a coming out story his own way, continue to expand LGBTQ+ representation throughout the comic universe, No more Not Brand Echh, make a concerted effort to hire writers of color and underrepresented communities
Re: lower prices: Yeah, this didn’t really happen. Many of the #FreshStart titles were $4.99, and page count didn’t really justify that either. That said, Marvel Unlimited’s comic offerings when compared to DC Universe surpass the Distinguished Competition. (You may argue this is not a fair comparison given maturity of each product in the market, but as someone who works for a digital archive, it’s not difficult to get more content up there.)
Re: Sina Grace: My prayers were answered and Bobby Drake returned to my pull list in September. As Sina Grace mentioned in our NYCC interview, the success of the trades sent a sign to Marvel. Let this be a lesson to all: don’t shirk on buying your trades!
Re: LGBTQ+ Representation: We have the aforementioned Iceman, and “Runaways” (which features a lesbian character) is still going strong. But “America” was canceled in February (as part of a bloodbath of sorts with other titles featuring female leads, like Gwenpool and Kate Bishop), and the rumor of the openly gay Living Lightning joining the Avengers didn’t seem to happen. The House of Ideas was doing decently on this front in 2017, and had opportunity to take things further, but didn’t.
Re: no more Not Brand Echh: Didn’t get any, and for that, I am very grateful.
Re: hire more writers of color: We got Ta-Nehisi Coates on not one, but two titles, and his “Captain America” run thus far is *Italian Chef Kiss.* Dare I borrow from the Distinguished Competition but both his series are the Steve Rogers and T’Challa that we need and that we deserve right now. And we also have Nnedi Okorafor writing Shuri. It was not only smart for Marvel to create a series after what was arguably the best character from Black Panther (sorry T’Challa) but to get a woman who has made her mark in Afrofuturism to write the character.
Continued belowDovetailing off of this, it was also wonderful to see a female-centric West Coast Avengers with Kate Bishop’s Hawkeye and Gwenpool front and center. And the “Ironheart” solo series debuted last month and Riri Williams jumped into my heart. But for every step forward, there is two steps back, and the sudden cancellation of Chelsea Cain’s “Vision” series was the two steps back. Knowing who is in charge at Marvel and their political persuasions, I don’t believe for one minute it was an editorial decision due to a change in direction for the character.
DC:
Brian Salvatore: Keep the miniseries coming, be smart with your Bendis assignments, finally give us Shazam
DC continued to publish a bunch of miniseries this year, but the quality has been far more up and down. “Eternity Girl” was one of the best things published in all of comics in 2018, and both “Electric Warriors” and “Martian Manhunter” are off to great starts. But books like “Bane Conquest” and “Raven: Daughter of Darkness” are just regurgitating old creators and dull stories. There are a lot of Jinxworld minis, but those seem squarely aimed at folks who already read/enjoyed those titles. Overall, though, I think this was more or less a win for the company.
I honestly cannot believe how good Brian Bendis has been at DC. Even though they literally did the two things I asked them not to (take Jon Kent out of Tomasi’s hands, give Bendis a young heroes book), Bendis has more than proven that I was wrong. Bravo, both DC and Bendis, for how they’ve handled this free agent signing.
And, finally, Halle-fucking-lujah. Just under the wire.
Christopher Chiu-Tabet: integrate the new characters, make the Joker funny again
All of the New Age of Heroes books took different approaches to how integrated they should be with the rest of the DC Universe, with mixed results: the likes of “The Unexpected” couldn’t maintain wider interest due to their obscure casts, “Sideways” doesn’t have much crossover but it’s engaging enough, and “Silencer” has already made the leap outside comics to Arrow. I guess it proves William Goldman’s old adage that no one knows why or if anything will work.
Joker’s role in Scott Snyder and Jorge Jimenez’s “Justice League” this year were no less frightening than his starring roles in Snyder and Capullo’s “Batman,” but the fact the character is once again a team player continues a huge sea-change in his characterization after “Dark Nights: Metal.” Likewise, his appearances in “Batman” and the “Prelude to the Wedding” made him seem more personable and fun to be around – it’s hard to imagine the seemingly undead beast of the New 52 being tied up and dumped in pudding. I guess the Joker is fun again.
Jake Hill: Out with the old guard, show us some other cities, make sure every series has a clear premise
I wanted to see DC get rid of the old, and bring in the new. That was a big ask, and the fact that it happened at all is a pretty big deal. Thanks to some stellar journalism from Jessica Testa, Tyler Kingkade, and Jay Edidin, Eddie Berganza is finally gone. He was the most publicly known and egregious toxic element at the company, but his removal should have been the beginning of a reckoning. It wasn’t, but DC did snag Brian Michael Bendis, a Marvel stalwart. All signs point to Bendis being a kind dude with a big heart, but he’s not exactly the kind of new voice I imagined infusing DC with bold new ideas. DC sales seem to have solidly plateaued (better than being in free-fall) but 2018 did not fill me with excitement for their line. I’m still waiting for the big shake-up.
Elias Rosner: Bring in mystery and magic, bring back J. H. Williams III and W. Hayden Blackman
I should have expected it, considering the tone of Snyder’s “Batman” run, but “Dark Nights: Metal” was exactly the event I was looking for. It embraced the insanity that is the DC Universe, re-introduced magic & DC Cosmic in a big way into Rebirth, and spun out a whole host of titles that eventually led to the book I hoped to see: a new “Justice League Dark.” The universe feels populated again in the various “Justice League” titles and in Morrison and Sharp’s “The Green Lantern.” “Batgirl” by Scott, Rapmund, and Pelletier and Percy’s “Nightwing” brought the streets of their towns into focus and “Action Comics” has made Clark Kent & the Daily Planet feel more real than they have in years. Abnett’s “Aquaman” finally hit it’s stride late last year and has only gotten better. I still feel like the DC Universe is lacking depth between its many big-name titles and there was that ill-fated attempt to bring “Promethea” into the main universe over in “Justice League of America.” It’s shaky at best and very spotty in it’s inclusion of and reckoning with what came before — Specter, Phantom Stranger, and the Question are all still unaccounted for and the other magicians/mystical/supernatural characters who have bit parts in “Justice League Dark” are only now starting to make appearances — but with the New Age of Heroes and The Sandman Universe adding their odd corners into the mix, the weird and the wild is certainly alive and well.
Continued belowIt was a pipe dream to start and a pipe dream it shall remain, especially after the “Justice League of America” debacle, and I don’t think we’ll ever see J. H. Williams III or W. Haden Blackman return to DC. It’s disappointing and maybe it will happen in a future time but it’s no great tragedy anymore.
Justin Beeson: No more double shipping, please.
Maybe I should have just kept my mouth shut because the double-shipping epidemic has only gotten worse, and not just from DC. They’re still double-shipping, but now the price has creeped back up to $3.99. I guess one part of my wish did come true: Brian Michael Bendis is doing two Superman books in the style of his X-Men and Avengers runs over at Marvel, where the books are telling independent, but complementary stories. I think that’s the better way to go, and more kind on budget-minded comic fans because both series don’t need to be read to know what’s going on in the other.
Kent Falkenberg: Put Stjepan Sejic and Riley Rossmo on everything, “Shade, the Changing Man” omnibus
So, what I meant was 2019 will be the Year of Sejic & Rossmo. After a quiet year at DC, they’ve both just been laying in wait and loading up the hopper to explode all over us next year, right… Right? It’s a bit ironic that what little they doled out was all done in collaboration with Joshua Williamson – Justace League Odyssey for Sejic and Vertigo’s Deathbed for Rossmo. Not sure what that means, but I think we’re all stoked to see what Rossmo delivers in the upcoming Martian Manhunter maxi-series, which has an outside chance of being next year’s Mister Miracle. So, i say again, 2019 – the year of Sejic and Rossmo.
On the “Shade” front, crickets again here. We might be nearing the end of the Golden Age of Reprints. And it feels like we might have to wait until we’re deep into the Bronze Age before we see Milligan’s “Shade, the Changing Man” collected into a couple of thick deluxe editions.
