Comic Book Resources

What a maroon.

Even his apologists have to admit it at this point.

Oh, come on. Allow for the possibility--no offense to the reporter--that Didio may have been misquoted or misunderstood or taken out of context before assuming the worst, okay? I may not be Dan's staunchest defender, but I'm sure he knows about the "Funeral for a Friend" storyline, and while I wasn't there when he said whatever he said, he's not an ignorant man. He probably just meant it's the first time Superman's ongoing adventures have been taking place outside his own title. Which is true.

Okay, maybe his actual words can, with enough hair-splitting and/or interpreting, be made reasonable.

But the bottom line is he was asking for mockery; why deny him entirely?

I have no doubt he KNEW about it. I'm sure it just slipped his mind. But if you are going to do a panel and utter a broad sweeping definitive hyperbolic statement like that, saying never happened in Superman's 70 year existence, a statement which I'm sure he had ready beforehand, he should really REALLY double check his memory and those of his other panelists before uttering it.

To Didio's credit, I found this part funny:

DiDio also noted that the number of people wearing Lantern shirts at conventions in the US and UK was an exciting sign that the storyline was being well received. “I think everyone gets the simplicity of the concept – the dead shall rise. And God knows we have enough dead people in the DCU right now!”

Gotta admit, Didio's regime has done a lot to open up Blackest Lantern storyline opportunities by racking up so many deaths over the past few years.

He also said that no one's guessed the id of the new Batman (who "wins the cowl") and Robin...and boy, was he right! Man, never in a million billion quadrillion years would I have guessed that one!

Gotta admit, Didio’s regime has done a lot to open up Blackest Lantern storyline opportunities by racking up so many deaths over the past few years.

He told you he had a big plan!

I just hope they leave the Dibny's alone - I really wanted to see them as ghost detectives!

-"I just hope they leave the Dibny’s alone - I really wanted to see them as ghost detectives!"

Considering how the whole mess *began* with Sue's disgusting and pointless murder strory, not to mention Ralph's pathetic treatment afterwards, I doubt it. The "ghost detective" bit was an attempt by some of 52's writers
(Mark Waid, I think) to give them back some respect afterwards, but I'm sure if Didio thinks turning them into flesh-eating zombies will sell, he won't blink about doing it.

Hey, I just want the Dibny's out there solving mysteries and having some laughs.

If they can't be The Elongated Man with his mystery twitching nose and his long suffering ever loving bride, then two ghosts traveling the country solving crimes works just as well for me.

I just want the Dibny's!

However, bringing them back as zombies... what would be the point?
I really do not understand bringing back a character - or putting a character in a story - that isn't true to the spirit of that character?
Why even bother having the Elongated Man in a story if it's not a light-hearted romp?

I'm also really annoyed with his comments about people who 'wait for the trade' in that panel.

It's always odd to hear someone talk about not really liking one part of their audience as much as another, but odder when it solely seems to be because they don't read comics the way he did.

WIll someone fire this guy already?

Zombies that solve mysteries! You've never seen that before...

T.

"Gotta admit, Didio’s regime has done a lot to open up Blackest Lantern storyline opportunities by racking up so many deaths over the past few years."

I'm wondering if that was intentional. I mean, we've had SO MANY deaths over the past five years or so, almost all of which are showing up in the Blackest Night teaser images. We know that Blackest Night has been in the pipeline since Green Lantern #1, so that's what, three years? We also know that Geoff Johns has an extraordinary amount of stroke with Didio. Who knows how long the two of them have been plotting this?

There's no goddamn apostrophe in "Dibnys!" Or any other plural noun!

Michael

How would you pluralize more than one McDonald's restaurant?

McDonalds'.

Give me a hard one.

There’s no goddamn apostrophe in “Dibnys!” Or any other plural noun!

There's nothing cool about losing perspective on a grammar mistake either.

Bill, I assume that DiDio carries around a photo of you, captioned " Don't Believe His Lies "...

But to make the peace, from now on, I'll call them 'Dibnies', just for you.

Goofy hyperbole in a comics convention Q & A? What's next, impotent snark on the internet?!?

And who can imagine Bruce Wayne absent from Batman and Detective Comics?! At the same time Superman's gone, even! This is UNPRECEDENTED!

There is nothing cool about the fact that, as of this writing, it appears that around 94% of Americans (and more every day) are too ignorant and/or just too bloody lazy to master even the most basic use of apostrophes.

I sympathize with Michael's frustration. Some days the abuse of this innocent punctuation mark is just too much.

If they can’t be The Elongated Man with his mystery twitching nose and his long suffering ever loving bride, then two ghosts traveling the country solving crimes works just as well for me.

I kinda prefer the ghost detective idea. Ralph Dibny was the weakest link of the big three stretching guys. Plastic Man is funnier. Reed Richards is smarter. All that set Ralph apart was the relationship with Sue and that he was an amateur detective.

Well ...

The ghost detectives concept keeps the best bits and tries something new with the characters. It is a shame that we haven't gotten a mini-series or something.

Ralph Dibny was the weakest link of the big three stretching guys.

I'm sorry, but under Article 42, Section 12 of the CSBG bylaws, I must now ban you forever from this website.

On DiDio, after reading the whole article he sounds like Wilie Coyote trying to argue against gravity.

A growing number of fans want to read self-contained stories in trade? Well, then I will make them stop with "Battle for the Cowl"!

Fans seem to like stories that grow organically from their own titles and creators, like "Sinestro Corps War"? Then, we'll turn "Blackest Night" into a massive cross-over to force them out of that mind-set!

DC fans adore Superman and Batman, especially with attention to those characters coming from mass media? Let's get them out of their core titles, so that it is impossible for new readers to come from the movies or TV!

Fans make extremely strong connections between the version of a character written and/or drawn by a specific creator, like Geoff Johns on "Green Lantern" or Mark Waid on "The Flash"? Make absolutely sure that the creators know they are temporary help at best and that the DCU can move along just fine without them.

DiDio sounds particularly bitter about the X-Men franchise at Marvel. Well, it is important to remember that in the '70s that title was all but dead. They had been in re-prints for YEARS. If Marvel was doing big DiDio style cross-overs in those days: Jean Grey would've been raped and murdered (after all, she was just a cut-rate Sue Storm), while Cyclops would've been shot in the head by Professor X. There would have been no "Dark Phoenix Saga" to energize the title. Even if there had been, Claremont would have been forced out years earlier for not dutifully shipping Wolverine off to the Avengers.

In other words, Marvel managed to not poison the well on a set of characters that happened to be sitting on the shelf. Someone came along and was smart enough to have a use for them. The result has driven their company for DECADES.

I’m sorry, but under Article 42, Section 12 of the CSBG bylaws, I must now ban you forever from this website.

Well ... darn.

Apodaca, I'm going to have to disagree with you on your McDonald's plural. The restaurants are being pluralised, not McDonald, therefore the "possessor" remains singular, but your solution indicates that there is more than one McDonald behind the restaurant's name. The plural of McDonald's is McDonald's. Simple as.

I also hate it when people misuse apostrophe. One example I used to point out to Brian (though I gave up) is the way people always simply add an apostrophe to indicate the possessive form whenever a word ends with an s. The rule is simple. If it's a plural that ends in an s, then add an apostrophe only, but if it's a singular, you still add the s.
For example:
Prince Charles's horse
The dogs' (more than one dog) balls

Dirty plural misusers. You'll all see one day. You'll all see!

To be fair to Didio, Funeral for a Friends was a (solid) storyline about Superman's death. He wasn't there because he was buh-bye. This New Krypton thing, Superman's still around, but they're telling the Supes stuff in one book, and giving us a whole sepaarte book to describe Metropolis without him. It makes his absense notable if he's literally not in his own comic anymore.

I want to say that like it. But I've bought Superman continuously from before his death onto just a few months ago, when I cancelled my monthly pulls. because I didn't like reading a Superman comic without Superman in it, or one with 100,000 Supermen. So my actions go against my mouth here.

D'oh! That should have been "misuse apostrophes" or "misuse the apostrophe".

"To be fair to Didio"
He hasn't been fair to me.

DC really needs help right now. I mean, Marvel's got its problems, but DC is a freking mess. At least they've got Vertigo.

Ralph Dibny was the weakest link of the big three stretching guys.

I dunno, I can see Elastic Lad over Ralph, but Rubberduck? That's a bit of a stretch.

"There’s nothing cool about losing perspective on a grammar mistake either."

That would leave a lot of people with nothing to do around here, though, if they didn't.

Also:

"There is nothing cool about the fact that, as of this writing, it appears that around 94% of Americans (and more every day) are too ignorant and/or just too bloody lazy to master even the most basic use of apostrophes."

If you're singling funky out as an ignorant American, then- bwahahahahahhahahahhahahahahhahahahhahahahaha! At any rate, if I could buy everyone Eats Shoots and Leaves to sort all of this out, I would, but I can't, so maybe we can all back up off the grammar police routine. Especially on my hastily typed posts.

"“To be fair to Didio”
He hasn’t been fair to me."

Did he single you out or something?

Did he single you out or something?

"He sort of leered in the vague direction of my late adolescence/early adulthood! Or the sun was in his eyes.
Either way, that's not something you just get over."

The rule is simple. If it’s a plural that ends in an s, then add an apostrophe only, but if it’s a singular, you still add the s.
For example:
Prince Charles’s horse
The dogs’ (more than one dog) balls

I go by an even simpler version. If you pronounce the second s, then you write it. Offhand I can't think of any situations when it would give a different result to your rule...

At any rate, if I could buy everyone Eats Shoots and Leaves to sort all of this out, I would, but I can’t, so maybe we can all back up off the grammar police routine. Especially on my hastily typed posts.

I spent the rest of the week living in a cave, braving the elements. shaving off all the hair on my body and eating only what I could kill with my bear hands to oppose for my grammatical sin's.

"oppose"??? Surely you mean "atone".