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Post by Deleted on Oct 11, 2017 16:09:45 GMT -5
Waiting for someone to tell me how things like the Bloodlines annuals, Eclipso the Darkness Within, Armegeddon 2001 and other DC drek are put out by a company at their peak. DC put out as much drek as anyone else in the 90s, especially as part of their main line.
DC underwent what many call the DC Renaissance in the mid 80s fueled by the success of things like Watchmen, DKR, and other creator-friendly formats and deals (made possibly by Khan and Giordano's influence), and sped along by the British invasion of talent mostly in the wake of Karen Berger's talent hunting trips in the 80s after the hype to Moore's Swamp Thing took root at DC, culminating in a number of imprints that allowed for creator-ownership and/or creator participation like Vertigo, Helix, etc. But the renaissance was short lived, and once DC reestablished itself in the market it became just as regressive as any other publisher, pushing out events (Deth of Superman, Breaking of the Bat, Emerald Twilight the aforementioned annuals storylines in an attempt to push the line rather than individual books of quality and to get existing customers to spend more money rather than continue to court new markets and new readership. There were certainly exceptional books form DC in the 90s, but that's just it, they were exceptional because they were exceptions, not the standard stuff that was being pushed out month after month to market a line of books and characters relying on brand loyalty rather than quality of content as its selling point. DC began cutting back on some of the progressive deals with creators (things like scaling back ownership to participation in the Vertigo deal while maintaining all rights to properties in other mediums, acquiring Wildstorm and changing Alan Moore's deal when he went there because he explicitly no longer wanted to work for DC which caused him to pull back a lot of the ideas he initially had for the ABC line and abandon titles early as soon as he was contractually able to to avoid giving DC any more of his ideas or material than he had to) which made it less of a destination for a lot of talent who looked at other options with better deals on ownership and participation as the 90s progressed.
DC certainly had a peak in the late 80s and early 90s, but by mid-decade the exceptional stuff was heads and shoulders above what the bulk of the line was and what was being put out regularly was for the most part industry standard (what might be called replacement level players in sports, i.e. interchangeable with just about any other average player except substitute book for player) or below in terms of innovation, quality, etc. The peak did not last through the 90s (or even for most of it) and parts of the line regressed much quicker than others. On balance, DC in the 90s looked much like any other publisher with some good stuff, some bad stuff, some progress for creators and some shady dealings with creators and other shady business practices, and the 90s themselves for DC looked much like other decades with peaks and valleys throughout it in different areas of their business model and creative output.
-M
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Post by chromehead on Oct 11, 2017 17:50:49 GMT -5
You could almost say both Marvel & DC creatively peaked in the 80's (Marvel's line had a good tightness imposed on it by Jim Shooter, while DC was scoring big with 'serious' works by creators like Miller & Moore and the Brit invasion writers).
Marvel has had moments of greatness since (though many don't like Civil War, it was a compelling story that almost felt like a riff on Watchmen-era DC sensibilities). After the mostly lackluster New52, DC finally seems to be on the rebound with much of Rebirth.
I'd say, overall, DC succumbed just as hard as Marvel in the 90's to gimmicks, trends and dreck.
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Oct 11, 2017 20:43:44 GMT -5
DC certainly had a peak in the late 80s and early 90s, but by mid-decade the exceptional stuff was heads and shoulders above what the bulk of the line was and what was being put out regularly was for the most part industry standard (what might be called replacement level players in sports, i.e. interchangeable with just about any other average player except substitute book for player) or below in terms of innovation, quality, etc. The peak did not last through the 90s (or even for most of it) and parts of the line regressed much quicker than others. On balance, DC in the 90s looked much like any other publisher with some good stuff, some bad stuff, some progress for creators and some shady dealings with creators and other shady business practices, and the 90s themselves for DC looked much like other decades with peaks and valleys throughout it in different areas of their business model and creative output. -M But the peaks were - if not higher - certainly more adult and subversive than ANY other corporate IP and periodical based comics company has put out at ANY point in their history. And, honestly, I think your timeline is a little off - I'm not disagreeing with what you said about any of DC's business practices, but they didn't really seem to come back and bite 'em in the ass until the 2000s. Vertigo, throughout the '90s, was THE place to get your factory system/creator owned work noticed. Dark Horse had some hits but only (as far as I can remember) working with established creators. Their crappy business practices mean that Image is far ahead of 'em in publishing interesting factory system work NOW, but that wasn't true (of anyone!) in the '90s. And keep in mind that DC might have been a little less subversive and interesting by the decades end. They ALSO stopped with the worst excesses of speculator market crap. And flipping through 1999 in Mike's Amazing World we got Veils*, Scene of the Crime, 100 Bullets, Astro City, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, work by Gerber, Aragones, Pope, Ellis, Ostrander, Ennis & McCrea, Morrison, Gilbert Hernandez AND Peter Bagge (on the same book!).. .And very little unmitigated crap. Definitely seems like an above average year to me. * SO good you guys. So good. |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Oct 11, 2017 21:05:25 GMT -5
I think I'd totally agree... while MRP is not wrong there was some crappy stuff, there was SO much good stuff too. I think if I was going to actually put a time on it, it might be more like 88-93 (though that misses out of my favorite DCU time that was dominated by the 3rd generation heroes).
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Post by Deleted on Oct 11, 2017 21:10:08 GMT -5
DC certainly had a peak in the late 80s and early 90s, but by mid-decade the exceptional stuff was heads and shoulders above what the bulk of the line was and what was being put out regularly was for the most part industry standard (what might be called replacement level players in sports, i.e. interchangeable with just about any other average player except substitute book for player) or below in terms of innovation, quality, etc. The peak did not last through the 90s (or even for most of it) and parts of the line regressed much quicker than others. On balance, DC in the 90s looked much like any other publisher with some good stuff, some bad stuff, some progress for creators and some shady dealings with creators and other shady business practices, and the 90s themselves for DC looked much like other decades with peaks and valleys throughout it in different areas of their business model and creative output. -M But the peaks were - if not higher - certainly more adult and subversive than ANY other corporate IP and periodical based comics company has put out at ANY point in their history. And, honestly, I think your timeline is a little off - I'm not disagreeing with what you said about any of DC's business practices, but they didn't really seem to come back and bite 'em in the ass until the 2000s. Vertigo, throughout the '90s, was THE place to get your factory system/creator owned work noticed. Dark Horse had some hits but only (as far as I can remember) working with established creators. Their crappy business practices mean that Image is far ahead of 'em in publishing interesting factory system work NOW, but that wasn't true (of anyone!) in the '90s. And keep in mind that DC might have been a little less subversive and interesting by the decades end. They ALSO stopped with the worst excesses of speculator market crap. And flipping through 1999 in Mike's Amazing World we got Veils*, Scene of the Crime, 100 Bullets, Astro City, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, work by Gerber, Aragones, Pope, Ellis, Ostrander, Ennis & McCrea, Morrison, Gilbert Hernandez AND Peter Bagge (on the same book!).. .And very little unmitigated crap. Definitely seems like an above average year to me. * SO good you guys. So good. 1999 was also the year DC was recalling entire print runs and pulping them because editorial didn't catch what they later determined to be objectionable material and decided to recall, destroy and put out sanitized versions of the books. Most of the interesting stuff at that time was coming out under imprints other than the main DC banner, and DC editorial at that point for their branded line of books was extremely regressive, and we can quibble about what we consider unmitigated crap, I think a Darkchylde Summer Swimsuit Special might qualify there as well as a bunch of other books coming out at that time. '99 wasn't as bad as other years of the 90s but look at the full slate of books from like '91 to '97 not just the exceptional stuff that stands out and tell me that's a publisher at its peak. For a good part of the decade their typical content (again not the exceptional stuff but the average run-of the-mill book coming out from DC) was sub-par. What DC was doing right (and what was drawing creative people to do projects at Vertigo and other places) was that they had their house in order when it came to the book trade and collected editions. They were putting out collected editions of stuff form Vertigo and of the exceptional DC stuff and it was staying in print and reaching new audiences outside the Wednesday Warrior crowd who was content to eat up the run of the mill pablum under the main DC banner. Here's where I will make a distinction, and concede that as a publishing house, DC was doing a lot of good things and it may have been one of the higher peaks, but as a content creator however, the bulk of the stuff they were creating in house under their editorial regime (and not publishing for creators-who retained the rights-with limited editorial supervision/input), which was the overwhelming majority of their output for the decade, was nowhere near a peak for most of the decade, and since DC's overall business model is primarily as a content creator who publishes their own material, that substandard output for most of the decade negates the strengths of the publishing house side of the operations when considering the whole of their operations. Parts of their operation may have been operating at an unprecedented high, but you can't discount he bulk of their operation which was operating at the same level as every other publisher that decade and one could argue at a level lower than previous decades in terms of quality, innovation and long term appeal of that in-house output. -M |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 11, 2017 21:16:38 GMT -5
As a post script, I will also note a lot of the exceptional projects DC put out as a publishing house and not a content creator that the creator's owned the rights to are now have new editions put out at other publishers, and a lot of the in house stuff created during that time is not in print anywhere currently demand for it has disappeared because it did not stand the test of time.
That may speak more to the current state of DC now then at that time, but it also points to the fact that a lot of the stuff from that time that stood the test of time and remains viable was not produced by DC, they just facilitated getting it to market for creators who used their infrastructure to get their material in the hands of buyers.
-M
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Oct 11, 2017 21:22:24 GMT -5
Understanding Comics, Sandman, Stuck Rubber Baby, a History of Violence, Road to Perdition, a BUNCH of offbeat and (potentially) offputting creator driven work from Peter Milligan**. According to GCD, Understanding Comics was published by Tundra in 1993 and HarperCollins in 1994, and wasn't published by DC until 1999. Yes, I agree that DC published Understanding Comics in the '90s. You can tell because it was on list of comics that DC published in the '90s. It's worth pointing out that some of these more not-spandex-y projects have a long and convoluted publishing history, and DC didn'tnurture all the talent of all the creators I listed. Vertigo reprinted at least one series J. M. DeMatties did for Marvel/Epic. And I suspect that some (if not most!) of the books that eventually ended up at Paradox were not originally intended to be published by DC comics. I was gonna make a big deal of DC reprinting Will Eisner's stuff - certainly not the original publisher! - but I don't think that started until the year 2000. (I'm still not sure, though!) And, honestly, I don't think it affects my argument that '90s DC was willing to publish works far outside what other traditional comics publishers did - or do - publish. |
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Post by shawnhopkins on Oct 11, 2017 21:40:40 GMT -5
If you count all the spinoff imprints I agree. if you're referring to D.C. Comics, the imprint that published mostly superheroes, well, Zero Hour. Knightfall. Darkstars. Death of Superman. Extreme Justice. Endless gimmicks. There was good stuff, but the crap kind of outweighed it in pure tonnage.
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Post by hondobrode on Oct 11, 2017 21:58:52 GMT -5
It was into the 2000's where the higher-ups at DC noticed that creators were keeping the rights to their creations at Vertigo and nixed that.
I'm positive of that.
DC's overall line was better than Marvel's at the time, which was at an all-time low IMO.
Arguably, some had a stronger line, like Dark Horse. That may be true.
Everyone has peaks and valleys, ups and downs, good and not-so-good.
Bloodlines, Eclipso, Armageddon 2001, etc, yes, were drek.
and your point is ?
I hated Bloodlines. Eclipso was not that bad and Armaggedon would've been better up until they swaped out Hawk for Captain Atom.
We're looking at a decade here; the entire decade of the 90's.
Post-COIE is what really set off the firestorm of greatness for DC, but that was in the latter half of the 80's.
DC had tons of good stuff going on in the 90's.
Part of what made DC so great during that time, in fact most of it, was from their non-mainstream imprints, as has been mentioned here, i.e. Vertigo, Helix, Paradox Press, Piranha Press, etc
Should I shine a spotlight on what Marvel was doing at that time ?
What were they putting out in the 90's that was fantastic ?
That's when my Marvel purchases dropped way down and have only modestly recovered after Quesada & Palmiotti came on with Marvel Knights. It's slowly backslide since then to the lowest level of Marvel I've ever bought. In fact, just a couple months ago, I quit reading the Previews articles on Marvel for what's coming up and mostly skip the Marvel news at CBR or Newsarama because I just don't care anymore.
DC was doing far above most publishers back then with the possible exception of Dark Horse or Fantagraphics.
For a mainstream publisher, it's truly amazing what they were putting out.
Marvel dropped like a rock, stating, characters sell comics, not creators.
DC was putting out daring, experimental cutting edge product, and I became more and more a DC fan and less and less a Marvel fan.
I loved Epic, but almost everything good that the imprint had was in the 80's. The 90's gave us The Sleeze Brothers, the Olympians, Dragonlines, Heavy Hitters, Lance Barnes : Post Nuke Dick, Offcastes, Spyke, War Man, and Chiller ? This is the same imprint that gave us Epic Illustrated, Dreadstar, Time Spirits, The Black Dragon, and Void Indigo in the 80's, to name a few.
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Pat T
Full Member
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Post by Pat T on Oct 11, 2017 22:15:56 GMT -5
It sounds like the criteria being used is whether or not DC was putting out too many of those awful mainstream books instead of the "groundbreaking" ones that only smart
people who claim to understand art truly enjoy, like fans of indie bands until they have a hit. Or maybe that's my imagination. Just sounds pompous to me.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 11, 2017 22:20:46 GMT -5
Marvel dropped like a rock, stating, characters sell comics, not creators. DC as a content creator was doing the same thing. Multiple creative teams on the same storyline (triangle era Superman, Bat x-over after Bat x-over) is not promoting creators, it's selling characters. They were trying to sell a line of comics through cross-overs, multiple covers (they were really the only ones doing it in the 90s) and guest appearances just like Marvel was. They weren't promoting creators in the main line, their in-house produced stuff, which made up the bulk of their output throughout the 90s. Marvel largely ceased any publishing that wasn't coming from in-house creation and editorial. DC's in house output wasn't doing anything different than Marvel was. The difference was those imprints, and that was largely created outside DC and DC only facilitated getting that kind of product to market, they weren't doing that content, they were acting like Random House, Ballantine or any other book publisher, who marketed and had an infrastructure to get goods to market but didn't have much if any hand in creating the content. And a large part of it was that DC was using those books to set up a pipeline into the book trade for their in-house created content in collected form to get that to a wider audience when without those imprints DC's other material might not have gotten the shelf space in the book market. They weren't supporting creators so much as using creators to expand their markets for their in-house stuff, to get it into new markets because they were losing the sales battle in the direct market and they were still led by Jeanette Khan whose background was in publishing not comics and she knew the value of having other outlets/markets for their output. and also note, yes, the Vertigo deals got changed in the 2000s, but it was never as sweet as creators thought because even in its earliest stages DC controlled all rights to the properties in other media, that was part fo the deal form the get go, not a later take back, and that;s what ended up souring a lot of creators on Vertigo or kept them from going with Vertigo even at its peak under Karen Berger, it was only after Vertigo started bleeding money because it wasn't selling at all, even in the book trade, that they scales back the deal even more, but there troublesome aspects to the deal even in the 90s. If you were looking only for the print rights to the story, it was a good deal for creators, but all other rights for the properties were held by DC/WB until such a time as they allowed the project to revert back to the creator (at which point they could take it to another publisher as many have now). For other media there was creator participation, but no actually creator ownership under the Vertigo deal even in the 90s, meaning they got a slice of the pie but had no say whatsoever in how those media rights got exploited. -M |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 11, 2017 22:26:15 GMT -5
In the 90's DC Comics had Grant Morrison headlining the Justice League of America ...one of his brightest idea is to put Plastic Man on the team and that's was brilliant and knowing that he brought in Zauriel, Tomorrow Woman, Big Barda, Orion, and the core of the Justice League ... Superman, Batman, Green (Kyle Rayner) Lantern, Flash (Wally West), Wonder Woman, and the rest of the team including Manhunter from Mars and put together probably the best group of Justice Leaguers outside the Satellite Era. I just loved this group and still have the 126 issue run and still read them occasionally. I sold the entire run 3 months ago and got it back - the owner of my LCS had my copy and gave it back to me at the price that I he sold to me earlier.
His Doom Patrol is exceptional too and I'm thinking of reading it in a month or two.
Mr. Morrison should be recognized for his efforts to do a good job on the Justice League and the Doom Patrol as well.
He and many others made DC Comics a superior product(s) back in the 90's ...
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Post by hondobrode on Oct 11, 2017 22:59:26 GMT -5
Yes, but, Marvel at the time was simply putting hacks on the titles.
DC may not have been putting their A-list creators on, but it wasn't at the bottom-of-the-barrel level Marvel was using then.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 11, 2017 23:01:22 GMT -5
Yes, but, Marvel at the time was simply putting hacks on the titles. DC may not have been putting their A-list creators on, but it wasn't at the bottom-of-the-barrel level Marvel was using then. You mean hacks like Mark Waid, Ron Garney, Kurt Busiek, Warren Ellis, Roger Stern, Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning, Chris Claremont, Salvador Larocca, Alex Ross, Roy Thomas, George Perez, Peter David, J.M. DeMatteis and others? -M |
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Post by hondobrode on Oct 12, 2017 0:04:34 GMT -5
Yes, but, Marvel at the time was simply putting hacks on the titles. DC may not have been putting their A-list creators on, but it wasn't at the bottom-of-the-barrel level Marvel was using then. You mean hacks like Mark Waid, Ron Garney, Kurt Busiek, Warren Ellis, Roger Stern, Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning, Chris Claremont, Salvador Larocca, Alex Ross, Roy Thomas, George Perez, Peter David, J.M. DeMatteis and others? -M Obviously hardly any of those creators would be considered hacks most the vast majority of people. No, I'm talking about the other end of the spectrum you're ignoring that polluted the racks and are now, hmmmmm, no longer with us, due possibly to low demand for their inferior product. How about Antonio Matias, Chris Carlson, Mike Harris, Marc McLaurin, Rurik Tyler, Scott Benefiel, Frank Turner, Tom Morgan, Ron Wagner, Rick Ungar, Bob Forward, Howard Mackie, Evan Skolnick, Terry Kavanaugh, Matthew Morra, Chris Wozniak, Khato, Ed Perryman, Max Douglas, Andrew Wildman, Glenn Herdling, Todd DeZago, Shon C. Bury, Chap Yaep, Allen Im, and can I quit now please sir as I'm close to coughing up blood at this point |
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