Comic Book Resources

Why were superheroes dominant? Easy, the comic code.

Seriously, romance and horror comics were neutered by the stringent limitations of the code, same with war comics and westerns, which were limited both by the amount and kind of violence they could show, and at the same time, Marvel and DC’s silver age respective renaissances likely created a bandwagon effect, where the top-selling books all had to do with cape-and-tights characters.

It pains me a little inside when I realise New Avengers/Transformers and Spider-Man/Red Sonja are inter-company crossovers.

It seems the big two don’t deal with licensed properties much these days though, why is that?

I’m not so sure about Marvel & DC having extensive digital archives. They’re probably working towards that now, with the Omnibuses (Omnibii?) and Essential collections, but reading through some of the posts and interviews done by the collection staff on Marvel.com (and other places), it seems like they’re just now getting to the digital archiving point. Which is a shame!

Part of his deal with Vertigo allowed that, if Vertigo decided not to do anything with it, Delano could take it elsewhere, and that’s what he did in 2004.

Does this mean that if Vertigo did want to produce TPBs Delano couldn’t take it anywhere else? Is this what happened with Peter Milligan’s Skreemer where it was announced by another company, but then came out from Vertigo?

“Also, remember that Marvel is a public corporation and DC is part of a huge public corporation, so you can imagine that they’d be more difficult to coordinate things with.

It’s a real testament to their staff that they make as many inter-company crossovers as they do!!”

A testament to their bureaucratic skills, maybe. It’d be a testament to their creative taste if they made less.

If I ran Marvel, project #1 would be to buy all rights to ROM the spaceknight.
Can’t cost more than a couple bucks.(Referencing its value without Mantlo’s additions to the story)

I have long had a theory that superheroes became the dominant force in US comic books because, after the advent of television, comic books were the only significant source of superhero stories. Romances, westerns, funny animal cartoons, crime stories–excellent examples of all of these were readily available on television, for free. (The decline in comics readership in the US in the 1950s through 1970s tracks very closely with the increase in television viewership.) Superheroes, though, generally translated very poorly; if you wanted a good superhero story–and there were still people who did–you had to go to comics.

This has finally changed, to the point where I think that in ten years, people will no longer think “comic book” when they see a superhero story. We’ll see if I’m right.

As to the question of rights: I’m fairly sure that Vertigo uses a rights-reversion contract model standard to the book industry, where they have the rights to a work (e.g., Skreemer, Watchmen) as long as they keep it in print. The creators–the owners of the copyright–can request back the rights to the work, but the company can retain the rights if they demonstrate that they are actively publishing it. (I am certain this is the case with Moore’s major non-DUC work, based on comments he’s made in interviews. I have seen one contract from Touchmark, the abortive Disney “adult readers” imprint from 1991-92 which ended up becoming Vertigo; they used a standard rights reversion model, and I think that Vertigo used the same contracts.)

DanC : Every contract is different. For example, DC has/had the reprint rights to the Fallen Angels they published, and continued to issue their TPB when Peter David took it over to IDW…I *think* that IDW now has the first volume, but I’m not sure. (also, Fallen Angel wasn’t quite a creator-owned character…DC owned part of the copyright to it…same as with The Boys…so it’s not as simple as just going to IDW with it…DC had to let it go.)

Licensed books also very on contract. IDW has the Transformers license…but Devil’s Due can publish Transformers comics as long they’re teamed with GI Joe.

Likewise, Dark Horse has Buffy, IDW has Angel (because Dark Horse let the license rights for Angel expire). Despite their connection, they’re 2 separate properties (same with Xena at Dynamite and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, which is unclaimed to my knowledge). IIRC correctly, Dark Horse can use Angel or Spike in certain circumstances, but not in others.

Marvel, btw, can apparantly have Rom show up…just not Rom as Space Knight. (he was at Rick Jones’ wedding, for example).

And if you bring England into it, it gets real weird, as you have Death’s Head, who was a Transformers character, who then showed up in Doctor Who, and then had his own series where he could fight the FF.

There’s lots of folks digitizing comics for “archival” purposes, but CBR is a legitimate site, so we shouldn’t discuss such things here:)

re: Intercompany crossovers, it all comes down to the lawyers. Shi/Fallen Angel can be as simple as Peter David and Bill Tucci swapping beers and saying let’s do it. Even Witchblade/X-Men is Marc Silvestri who owns Witchblade calling up Quesada, who has what ever lawyer at Marvel handle such things write up a contract.( or Silvestri calling Didio..though there’s probably a few more lawyers involved there). Transformers/Avengers ups the problem since you have IDW, Marvel, and Hasbro involved (though since Marvel and Hasbro has a business relationship already with some toy level crossovers, I’d guess there weren’t huge hurdles to cross. Marvel and DC you have to have their editorial folks and they’re legal folks all agreeing. And if you picture say Star Wars and Star Trek meeting, you get Dark Horse, IDW, Paramount, Lucas, the butcher, and the baker invovled.

whoo.

Thanks for the answers to the questions, Brian! You rock.

People on the Intertron are slowly scanning and digitizing hundreds if not thousands of comics every week. You can usually access these on the newsgroups or through the DC++ program. Don’t worry, if Marvel and DC don’t take care of it, the rest of us will.

Scott McCloud wrote some interesting things about why superhero genre dominates the medium in one of his books (I think it was in Reinvinting Comics, but I’m not sure.) Part of it was the Comics Code, and part of it was shrinking shelf space.

I don’t know if this is exactly what was asked but Marvel has put out tons of comics on DVDs in the past few years. They are being scanned by a company called git-corp. Captain America from the 60s to the shooting issue, Hulk from the 60s to Prelude to Planet Hulk, Amazing Spider-Man, X-Men, Ghost Rider, Fantastic Four, and Avengers have all gotten the same treatment. Originally, they put out Spider-Man on 11 CD-roms and it was quite cumbersome. Now, you get over 500 issues on one DVD. The only drawback is (of course) the crossover heavy 90s make it impossible to read a storyline straight through as the DVD only has one title at a time.

You can get these online for about $35 bucks a pop and they are great back ups to have to save wear on a physical collection. If you are dying for a hard copy, all the comics are printable. The thing I like best is the feature the entire comic; ads, pin-ups and letter columns included. For example, simply because Hulk shared a title with Sub-Mariner for awhile, you get these cool Subby stories on the Hulk DVD.

And if you bring England into it, it gets real weird, as you have Death’s Head, who was a Transformers character, who then showed up in Doctor Who, and then had his own series where he could fight the FF.

Death’s Head is actually simpler than you think. Marvel’s original contract with Hasbro said that Hasbro owned any characters created for the Transformers series; in short terms, any character that appeared there first. Death’s Head was indeed created specifically for the TF story, but Marvel (thinking that perhaps they had something worth holding onto, here) rushed out a very brief (one page, maybe?) strip that “introduced” DH and ran in a bunch of books, so that they could say he was a Marvel character who crossed into the TF universe, not a TF character who crossed into the Marvel Universe. Everything else was just a dimensional jaunt from there.

And the Micronauts were just mentioned in some book last week, I believe. Can’t remember what it was, but some character was reminiscing and mentioned them…

Bug probably mentioned them. He was an original Marvel character introduced in the Micronauts book.

There is an online group of people who scan comics both new and ancient for the purposes of archive/preservation, they’re called DCP (Digital Comics Preservation)

Touchmark, the abortive Disney “adult readers” imprint from 1991-92 which ended up becoming Vertigo

This is news to me. Does anyone have more details about that?

but Marvel (thinking that perhaps they had something worth holding onto, here) rushed out a very brief (one page, maybe?) strip that “introduced” DH and ran in a bunch of books, so that they could say he was a Marvel character who crossed into the TF universe, not a TF character who crossed into the Marvel Universe.

Canny – I like it!

Superheroes (and superhero comic books) gain popularity in inverse proportion to professional wrestling. Look it up. If you graph the rise and fall and rise and fall of pro wrestling since the mid century it almost directly mirrors the fall and rise and fall and rise of superhero popularity.

This assertion is based on absolutely no graphing or mathematical data. But yet it seems like it could be true, right?

I think you should take that theory to Steven Grant – He loves bringing in wrestling comparisons when talking about comics

I finally looked up the Micronauts reference, if anyone cares: it was in MODOK’s 11, at the end of the Las Vegas sequence.

And Death’s Head’s first’s appearance’s… sorry, I got caught up, there. His first appearance was indeed in a story called “High Noon Tex,” which was printed in all the Marvel UK books… sometime. I couldn’t pin down when. It was written by Simon Furman (the guy who wrote the TF stories) and the art was by Bryan “Ultimates” Hitch. How about that!

You could probably turn this whole thing into an Urban Legend Revealed fairly easily…

Yeah, it WOULD work well, wouldn’t it.

Thanks!

for a similar “we had her first” character who didn’t work out quite as well as DH, check out Circuit Breaker, who made her debut (and in the process, saved the world) in Secret Wars II before becoming a TF regular…

I always thought that the reason that there were more superhero comic books than any other genre was simply because superheroes could be done in comic books.

In tv or movies the special effects are pricy, but for comic books it costs the same to do a heartfelt drama as a space armada battling the Silver Surfer.

In novels, pages and pages of description really cannot compete with the immediacy of seeing the effects of Green Lantern’s ring.

Horror is another obvious genre that the medium of comic books has an advantage over the others, but for a time the CCA put a stop to those.

This is why I think that the biggest threat to comic books is happening right now. Heroes did on TV what comic books have been trying to do for 25 years. They sold an audience on the idea that normal-acting people have super powers. I first saw this idea in Jim Shooter’s New Universe, and I’ve seen attempts at duplication since then (Malibu, Defiant) but Heroes was the first time I saw it work on a marketing level.

Comic books simply aren’t (IMHO) producing stories that are good enough to compete with Heroes, Hex, Smallville, Supernatural, etc. Even Doctor Who now has a budget to put the SFX on par with comic books.

And, from a story standpoint, I have to say that WWE’s continuity is much tighter and more “newbie friendly” than either Marvel or DC. WWE explained, on camera, why Umaga went from being a villian to a hero. Why did Iron Man go from being a hero to a villian? Was there a satisfactory explanation?

Did DC ever explain why Jason gets murdered by Joker and gets a memorial, but Stephanie gets murdered by Black Mask (acting strangely like Joker and I’d love to see a story explaining that Joker was impersonating Black Mask) and doesn’t get one? That seems to be a big personality continuity gaffe.

And, IMHO, if comic books can’t compete on either a special effects level or a story / entertainment level, then what do they offer to increase their customer base?

Theno

please can anyone tell me how many issues of avengers weekly marvel uk were there? i have fro 01-148 and i think 150 but not sure and what happened after the final weekly issue?

Though it is not happening just yet, it will hopefully happen soon. A company by the name of Qtrax was supposed to have the debut of their new online file- sharing service but postponed it. This service is supposed to offer free, unlimited music from some of the biggest music record labels out there. Qtrax postponed the launch of the service and is now finalizing the music licensing deals.

I agree with what Bret said. I’ve thought for years now that Marvel should just buy ROM. I’ve always felt that Rom is the only licenced property that really integrated well into the Marvel Universe, and the simple fact is that the character never had any success whatsoever outside of Marvel. Parker Brothers (or whoever owns him now– Milton Bradley??) never made any money from the toys, and as far as I’m aware, the character has never been used anywhere since Marvel’s book ended.

Brian, you just reminded me of one of my head scratchers. What is the connection between Bug from the Micronauts and Ambush Bug? There has to be something there.