Comic Book Resources

A credit for editorialy-gang banged plots WOULD make it easier to know which comics to avoid...

Sounds like it should be more of a DIS-credit, in many ways.

Also, I get the feeling that The Powers That Be don't want us to know what stories are editorially mandated.

DC should make all these stories exist in their own continuity or something and let the real writers get on with the task in hand without taking unneccesary flak for other people.

Warning: This comic has been didio-ed.

Yuk.

I think in DCs case, it's actually easier to just assume almost EVERYTHING is editorially driven and make them stick a note on the three that aren't instead.

...failing that, you could draw a little Didio beard on the DC bullet thing for every Didio-ed comic.

I'm having flashbacks to Jonathan Peterson's run as the "editor" of the Titans back in the Titans Hunt era. He effectively seemed to be plotting and writing the book, with Wolfman kinda filling in dialogue (at least, that's the impression I got).

And it sucked, of course.

If I screwed up Gail Simone's awesome characterizations of Deadshot and Rag Doll... well, I'd be stressed too.
Especially Rag Doll. How the hell do you screw up Rag Doll?

Maybe they should just change the credit from "writer" to "scapegoat". Or how about "typist"? I also wonder how much this sort of thing poisons a writer's career, given that no one is going to boycott DC Comics over "Arena", but they could easily avoid Keith Champagne comics for life with little affect on their buying habits.

I was reading Bill Willingham’s comments about his departure from Salvation Run after only two issues, and he said something that I think most of us know already - writing comics like Salvation Run is a pain in the as

In fairness, he also said "let me add that big event books are fun, and many aspects of writing them can be enjoyable, even including the need to coordinate what you do in one book with what others are doing in many other books"

I also wonder how much this sort of thing poisons a writer’s career, given that no one is going to boycott DC Comics over “Arena”, but they could easily avoid Keith Champagne comics for life with little affect on their buying habits.

I think it happens often enough to new-to-mainstream comic book writers that people tend to forget as soon as a writer does good work in the future.

To wit, I don't think anyone held Legends against John Ostrander as soon as Suicide Squad came out.

In fairness, he also said “let me add that big event books are fun, and many aspects of writing them can be enjoyable, even including the need to coordinate what you do in one book with what others are doing in many other books”

I thought of including that, for fairness sakes, as you say, but then I thought, "Does that contradict the main point of 'writing editorially-driven comics is a pain in the ass?'," and I think it did not (as even as he says they're fun, he says they're fun EVEN THOUGH they're a pain in the ass), so I didn't think it necessary.

To be honest, if you ever read Peterson's full plans for Titans, I think they were actually quite brilliant. He never got to follow them through to fruition, but his ultimate master plan was genius, I swear. He effectively nailed why Titans tanked in popularity compared to X-MEN and had a plan to fix it. I think it would have been great.

One of his ideas: less crying and fight-losing. So common sense, yet no one figured it out.

If I can find the interview I'll link to it in this comments section.

T, is it this? http://titanstower.com/source/libhunt/peterson2005.html

Yes, that's it. I think the franchise was so doomed and stagnant that his ideas actually kept it alive and would have rejuvenated it if taken to fruition. I think he was dead on about why it lost so many readers too (too touchy feely). I also like that he didn't do the standard line and praise the hell out of the book and admitted that he wasn't ever a fan and found it to be boring. The big problem DC has with Titans is this overreverence for Wolfman/Perez and an inability and unwillingness to step out of its shadow. If it had such a great formula, it wouldn't have hemorrhaged readers like it did.

Whereas I have an innate distrust of anyone who thinks they can "revitalize" a franchise by killing off big chunks of the supporting cast (either because they're "lame" or "obscure"), blowing stuff up every issue to "shock" the readers, and tossing in new characters that he came up with that are all "extreme" and "bad-ass" and generally Liefeldian.

Plus, he was the man who came up with the "Hawk becomes Monarch" idea, one of the most ill-conceived decisions in DC's history (not necessarily the one with the biggest ramifications, but deciding to change the ending of your mystery and making the villain of a story be one of the only two characters in the entire fictional universe that it _couldn't_ be, just because your ending had leaked, is a level of stupidity most mortals don't approach.)

It's worth buying 'The Titans Companion', BTW, to read Marv Wolfman's interview about the same period. He talks about how terrible the ideas were that he was being forced to accept by his editor, how he just had no enthusiasm for the book anymore, and how he went along with it for a while before realizing there was just no point to him being the writer anymore if all he was going to do was transcribe someone else's story that destroyed everything he loved about the series.

Shock! Horror! Comics are being written not by the writers but by editors. That would never happen on television (where Show Runners pretty much dictate the way characters go and then break the story down in a writers room and any one writer probably can only dream that that 60%-70% of an episode is theirs) or film (which go through drafts and drafts based on the notes of the director, the producers and the studio caterer)

On the one hand, I agree the insular nature of the comics industry is coming to the point where comics are now de facto written by the editors. But on the other I think top-down writing is the nature of the pop-culture product beast these days. And nothing qualifies more as product than superhero comics.

It’s worth buying ‘The Titans Companion’, BTW, to read Marv Wolfman’s interview about the same period. He talks about how terrible the ideas were that he was being forced to accept by his editor, how he just had no enthusiasm for the book anymore, and how he went along with it for a while before realizing there was just no point to him being the writer anymore if all he was going to do was transcribe someone else’s story that destroyed everything he loved about the series.

Yeah, but what he loved so much about the comic was people crying and hugging each other and losing every fight they were in and constantly getting bailed out by guest stars, unless they were fighting nameless henchmen, the only foes they could beat decisively. I mean, there really was a lot that was lame about the book. You don't lose that many readers for nothing. I think people bought it back in the day because it looked like a Marvel book, but when people realized it was a bunch of kids whining about their daddy issues, crying a lot and losing every fight they were in, they got labeled as wimpy saps and people dropped it in droves when they realized it really wasn't so much like a Marvel book after all. The only readers who stuck with the book were the ones who emotionally connected with the Titans so much that they almost felt like family...which makes sense because the only people in real life that stick by you through thick and thin and have faith in you no matter how incompetent you prove you are is your family. But the average joe on the street who is not related to you will see you for what you are...a loser. This is why X-men succeeded where Titans failed. They had the emotional connection to keep the hardcore fans who regarded the X-Men as family, but they also had the cool asskicking to satisfy the casual fan and bandwagon jumpers who wanted to see the characters accomplish something and be cool and could care less about emotional identification. Titans on the other hand was written in a way that if you were a casual fan or someone who wanted to see asskicking protaganists, you were disappointed by seeing them constantly whupped, crying and hugging. It could only retain the fans who had emotional attachemetns to the Titans and viewed them virtually as friends and family, the people who didn't care if they were wimps.

So basically, I think Peterson was right to intervene and get Wolfman to cut back on the crying and losing (well, I think they were still losing actually, Marv can't help writing them like that). But honestly, I think he should have just taken him off the book altogether and found a writer like him who also had no strong emotional attachment to Wolfman's precedent.

That would never happen on television (where Show Runners pretty much dictate the way characters go and then break the story down in a writers room and any one writer probably can only dream that that 60%-70% of an episode is theirs) or film (which go through drafts and drafts based on the notes of the director, the producers and the studio caterer)

Showrunners are, to a man, writers who have proven themselves through long years in the trenches and gotten reputations as solid story crafters. Screenwriters, even when they're doctoring, get their jobs on the basis of their past work.

Dan DiDio's writing resume prior to working as an editor at DC are soap opera writing and Reboot. He moved into upper creative echelon work pretty fast after that. Good for him that he did, but he's not equivalent to a showrunner in terms of displayed skill.

I feel the need to point out that DiDio's Reboot stuff was shitty in exactly the same way DC's terrible editorial-driven comics are shitty. It was not shitty to the same degree, but the exact same fundamental problems.

I've also heard he was involved in the poorly-received Beast Machines iteration of Beast Wars, a show that fans previously praised for unusually good writing.

I can think of a number of reasons the companies wouldn't want to take credit away from the writer, not all of them altruistic, and some them are mentioned above.

But despite having one hand tied by editorial, sometimes these series can do quite well and might actually represent some royalties for a writer. They might be slower to give up their credit in that case, even if it doesn't represent their best work.

Mightygodking has an excellent point.

Such a credit already exists: "Plot By:"

Shooter used it.

Of course it would be nice if a writer could insist on having a "Plot By:" credit stuck in there. "Plot By Marv Wolfman and Jonathan Peterson; script by Marv Wolfman". Problem solved. We're no dummies. We can figure that one out.

T's long, insightful, elegant analysis of the problems with the Titans reduced to:

"So basically, I think Peterson was right to intervene and get Wolfman to cut back on the crying and losing"

And I'll agree there. But everything else he did as editor on the book was the same hamfisted "blow up the book to show the fanboys how 'edgy' we are" crap that turned the 90s comics boom into the 90s comics bust. There are better ways of making the Titans more active protagonists in their own book than by spending a year having them systematically hunted down and killed off by the Wildebeest Society. Much like there are better ways of taking your mind off a headache than by repeatedly nailing yourself in the crotch with a baseball bat.

Still think it made the book last longer than it would have without him. After the Wildebeest society arc, they were going to rebuild the team from the ground up. I think it could have worked with another writer. I do think blowing up the book to make it better was a 90s cliche, but in the Titans case it really did need one as it was on the verge of cancellation and had ZERO buzz. I think it would have been easier if he just had everyone quit and new members join, but the grim and gritty megacrossover with tons of death was the spirit of the times in all fairness. It did get worse after Peterson left I must say.

Let me add, even though I agree with Seavey that the execution left something to be desired when it was all said and done, Peterson was dead-on about the reasons Titans fell so far, and I think he had the best ideas on how to bring it back.

I was in my freshman year of college when the whole "Titans Hunt" thing happened. I was a HUGE Titans fan, and I'd decided to just give up on comics while I was at school, because there was no comic shop nearby, and I didn't have a car.

I was in the campus library one evening, and someone had left a few copies of Comic Shop News lying on one of the tables. One of the issues covered the big Titans Hunt storyline, and just reading the interview and seeing some cover art ignited my interest like wildfire. I think I called my old regular shop and set up a mail order account so I could have my books (especially Titans) sent to me at school.

All because of Titans Hunt. Those first six or seven issues were just fantastic. It went off the rails at the end and never really recovered, but for awhile, it was an excellent comic (again).

~ Jay

For me, I'd try the Titans sporadically over the years. As a big Marvel guy, they always seemed like the team at DC I'd be willing to try. Whenever I tried an issue though it would just be too dull and touchy feely. Plus Terry Long was too douchey for me to regularly buy any book he was in. The last straw was watching them get beat up by some lame werewolves and Speedy was complaining that someone on the team hurt his feelings (seriously!) Peterson's run on the other hand had me buying dozens of issues in a row for the first time. It really was solid for a while.

Plus, any one who says this: "“I’m going to kill Terry Long if it’s the last thing I do.” is all right in my book.

Such a credit already exists: “Plot By:”

Shooter used it.

Of course it would be nice if a writer could insist on having a “Plot By:” credit stuck in there. “Plot By Marv Wolfman and Jonathan Peterson; script by Marv Wolfman”. Problem solved. We’re no dummies. We can figure that one out.

Good! Let's see more of that!

I'll take that.

Plot by Dan Didio and Keith Champagne.

Script by Keith Champagne.

Champagne would get paid the same, and we'd all know that he was working under certain...ahem...restrictions.

And yeah, like it or dislike it, up until Johns' first few issues of Teen Titans, Titans Hunt was the last time there was any "heat" on the Titans as a title.

It certainly fell apart, but for awhile there, it made Titans a "hot" book for the first time since Perez's aborted return to the title.

I'm so used to being the black sheep around here that I actually get weirded out when people start agreeing.

I think that comic book writers would have to unionize in order to get to the point where they could, essentially, be saying, "Yeah, I wrote this, but only because I had to." Individually, they don't have the power.

I mean, if JMS had insisted his name be completely removed from 'One More Day', whether the removal happened or not, would he have ever gotten a job from Joe Quesada again?

And, since Didio does the same thing, how long before he was essentially blacklisted from the Big Two because he refused to take a credit he didn't deserve?

Didn't Alan Grant leave Batman 20 years ago because the bat-editors wouldn't let him write what he wanted?

T., you're capable of some super-intelligent thoughts, which makes it all the more heartbreaking when you descend into raving fanboy territory.

You're dead-on about why Titans Hunt was a good idea, but it fails for the same reason your initial defense failed: it rambled on too long and focused too much on how the old Titans sucked. Thanks, Captain Obvious, we couldn't notice that.

If it's self-evident the old Titans sucked, then just get it over with quickly, don't screw around hammering an obvious point. Destroy the team in four or so issues, and then immediately make good on the promise to rebuild it as something stronger.

Anything else just comes off as a more exaggerated version of what you're bitching about: the team losing, crying, hugging, etc. Because, we'll, you're pointing the camera at the sucky thing and not the promise of regeneration.

Lynxara, that's a valid point. It should have focused more on showing the right way to do things than harping on how wrong the old way was. Based on the Peterson interview, he made a mistake similar to Chris Claremont, he had an idea of where he wanted to go but took too long to get there, to the point where he never got to end up doing the stories he wanted to do.

almost every comment here seems to poke directly at dc. yeah sure dc's messed up big time over the past 3 years and i for one am not looking forward to how they're gonna mess it all up even further in a few months from now (crisis was confusing enough when it first came out in the 80's...)

but who would be to blame for all the really bad arcs of late at marvel ? (ie spider-man, WWhulk was way disappointing compared to planet hulk, civil war....and who can forget "the other").

these companies should let their creators create, and not their editors create for them. it's not the editors job to tell the writers what they need to write and how to write it. it restricts the creative freedom and in the end, we the readers remember only one thing...that it sucked. we don't know whose fault it really is (although we blame the artists and the writers because we're ignorant and don't know any better to actually find out who was..) and it's not fair to those who were just there for the ride because someone told them how to drive while they barked orders riding shotgun.

get rid of guys like didio and quesada, and let real creators and real people who care about what they deliver hold the reigns at these companies.....people who know how to write and guide creators when organizing large crossovers by telling the writers what the idea is, and letting them do their own thing and work with each other on these projects...

man i miss jack kirby sometimes...these days, more than ever.....