CSBG Archive
What is Up with DC and Unannounced Changes?
- by Chad Nevett
- in General
- 15 Comments
My friend blogger David Uzumeri has complained about DC changing the creative teams on books without announcing it before at the Savage Critics, but he’s compiled a great list of some of their unannounced changes in January alone over on Funnybook Babylon today. Looking at that list, I’ve got to wonder as well about why DC continually does this. It’s bait and switch business practices and it’s shameful. And, as David points out in that first link, the comics are made returnable, but that still means a lot of inconvenience for retailers and consumers who find themselves suddenly with a product that doesn’t match the description promised. It reminds me of when I was a member of Columbia House’s CD club and they had their selection of the month items. I would go alone and tell them I didn’t want that month’s selection, because otherwise they’d send it to you. Except, a good two-thirds of the time, they’d send it anyway, probably in the hope that I would just be too lazy to send it back and purchase the damn thing. I complained and their response was to tell me that in addition to refusing the selection on their website, I should also e-mail them each time and tell them that I didn’t want it. So I quit. I did enjoy buying CDs from them and had given them a decent amount of money in the time I was a member, but, now, you couldn’t pay me to go back because of their horrible customer service. And, honestly, every time David goes on Twitter and mentions another example of DC doing this, I’m tempted to simply walk away from them, too. They are supposed to be professionals and this isn’t professional behaviour. It’s amateurish bait and switch bullshit. Other companies make announcement when their products change, but not DC… why?
Edit: David updated his post to also include Marvel’s changes for the month as well to show a comparison between the two companies. DC had 14 changes, 12 of them unannounced. Marvel had 12 changes, eight unannounced officially since one was mentioned on Brian Michael Bendis’s Twitter account. So, I guess Marvel isn’t much better either this month. Though, it’s worth noting how many of DC unannounced changes are replacements, not the addition of co-artists whereas that’s what the majority of Marvel’s are. That’s still not good, but I think we can all agree that a completely different writer and/or artist is a bigger change that another artist drawing some of the book alongside the solicited artist.
15 Comments
David Uzumeri
January 26, 2010 at 9:02 pm
To be fair, all of Marvel’s unannounced changes were of the “hey, this dude is doing a few pages” variety, as opposed to DC’s, which were “hey, we switched up every single member of the creative team.”
Chad Nevett
January 26, 2010 at 9:03 pm
I just edited the post again to include that. Thanks, David.
Chris Katrev
January 26, 2010 at 9:21 pm
Diamond has product changes page.And there are alot of changes announced there.
Chad Nevett
January 26, 2010 at 9:36 pm
Yeah, and David links to Diamond’s site in the Marvel section when applicable because he checks there (he’s rather thorough like that). DC, apparently, doesn’t announce the changes through Diamond. That’s the issue at hand.
Enrique
January 26, 2010 at 9:42 pm
I would add that three of the Marvel changes were unsolicited back up stories. It seems like adding stuff to the comic without announcing is more of a problem to the company than to retailers or readers.
Alan Coil
January 26, 2010 at 10:05 pm
At least DC is making them returnable. Marvel doesn’t do returns.
Dean
January 26, 2010 at 11:39 pm
DiDio genuinely seems to think he is running something akin to a TV show called “DC Universe”. He, Geoff Johns and a couple other people plot it. Then, he assigns the individual episodes to whoever he has on staff.
Pedro Tejeda
January 27, 2010 at 5:51 am
As Brian Hibbs pointed out in this link (http://savagecritic.com/2008/01/how-returnability-works-or-why-dm-is.html) returning comics is not a free process on several levels. There’s been a shift recently in the fanbase as people begin to follow creators instead of characters. Changing the creator on a book would make several of the fans refuse to buy it.
Also aren’t the marvel books returnable if they change anything after the FOC? Or is that just my imagination?
MikeCr
January 27, 2010 at 7:08 am
To the best of my knowledge things really “can’t” change after FOC. If they had to they just push back release and re-FOC it with a new date after the change is buried in a Marvel Mailer or Diamond Dateline.
Matt D
January 27, 2010 at 10:13 am
I’m fine with DC tossing Marc Andreyko, Tony Bedard and Christopher Yost at comics randomly.
Chad Nevett
January 27, 2010 at 10:44 am
The point is that not everyone is/would be. The complaint, of course, isn’t meant as a criticism of any of the new creators put on the books — if anything, DC is hurting themselves possibly there because, as you point out, those creators do have fans that would go out of their way to buy those issues.
Joe
January 27, 2010 at 10:58 am
I just don’t understand the fascination with Andreyko. Manhunter was extremely mediocre.
Matt D
January 27, 2010 at 11:23 am
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not defending DC here. I think DC’s miscommunications (the Countdown fiasco, the treatment of McDuffie as JLA writer, the whole Chuck Dixon thing/an amazing inability to communicate what Grant Morrison is doing to anyone else working on the related books, etc) over the last five years have been more than embarrassing.
In some ways, this is just as bad if not worse.
I just happen to like a lot of the writers they end up using as back-ups (even Benson whose Moon Knight run I liked a whole lot more than the one before it or after it). The shadow Scott Lobdell fill-in on Sirens was actually a lot of fun too.
Rich (pacinofan)
January 27, 2010 at 5:50 pm
So, is Paul Dini officially off Gotham City Sirens and Streets of Gotham for good?
Ian A.
January 29, 2010 at 1:49 pm
I guess it’s tough to predict what’ll happen in the three months between solicitation and release.
Would be nice if they announced the changes in advance, though, certainly.