DDX_2002's Journal: Thank God for Catwoman

Thank God for Catwoman. That's right, true believers, that movie is the best thing that could have happened to comics in general and DC in particular. With the spectacular failure of this craptastic piece of celluloid trash, this perfect storm of teh suck, one can only hope that the folks at Warner Brothers learn to listen when their DC division tells them that their latest pillaging of DC's intellectual property is a Really Bad Idea. It should also slow down the process of the comic culture being stripmined - SDCC turned into a huge junket for the major studios the last couple years and was more about movies than the books.

Hopefully, WB studios will compare the success of Spider Man 2 and the spectacular failure of Catwoman ($17.5M? sci-fi and comic book stuff usually opens huge as the fanboy market lines up to catch the first possible showing, but declines rapidly unless it reaches out to the broader demographic), and will realize that the essential difference between the two (besides the superior writing, acting, directing of SM2) was that Spider Man was respectful of the source material. Well, with the exception of the Natural Progression of Peter Parker Love Interests - Gwen who? - but I'll give them that. When you're paying that kind of cash to Kirsten Dunst, she gets the screentime, okay? Besides, she's hot. If you treat the source material with disrespect, you'd better have concepts of your own that are at least as good or better. And if you did, you wouldn't need the license, now would you? Jack Black, I'm looking at you. And you too, Keanu (you ALMOST get a pass for casting Tilda Swinton but then I saw the concept sketches for your superhightech jet-car. Yeah, I didn't know John Constantine had one of those either).

And you too, whoever is directing Superman this week. We're watching you - but if the trailer shows you're pissing on the character's history, we won't actually go to see it.

Everyone is pissing on Superman's history

[gmhowell]

Smallville pisses on Superman's history, and a 'reinvention' in the comics, Superman: Birthright, pisses on it even more. Why should DC give a fuck if lemmings like myself will continue to suck down these shitty comics?

Re:Everyone is pissing on Superman's history

[DDX_2002]

Superman's almost a special case. Short of Hawkman, IMO there are few heroes in the DCU who've been retconned worse than him in the crisis on zero hour type rewrites the company is fond of(the four supermen interregnum; the blue suited energy being *shudder*; the complete dumping of the silver age when they rebooted him and had him actually marry Lois; and the unforgivable, the Time Trapper nonsense when they made it so that superboy and the Legion were no longer part of the mainstream DCU history).

Birthri

Re:Everyone is pissing on Superman's history

[gmhowell]

I stopped reading Birthright after the second or third issue, because I found it *wretched*. Around the time issue six or seven came out, I was reading rec.arts.comics.dcu, and there were many posts linking to either the writer or editor saying that this was now the origin of Supers.

Zero Hour was a crock. I stopped reading comics shortly after that travesty. Not because of 'ooh, yet another big bad crossover' but because of the stunt of making Hal evil for no reason whatsoever.

The Crisis story had the mos

Re:Everyone is pissing on Superman's history

[DDX_2002]

I stopped reading Birthright after the second or third issue, because I found it *wretched*. Around the time issue six or seven came out, I was reading rec.arts.comics.dcu, and there were many posts linking to either the writer or editor saying that this was now the origin of Supers.

Yeah, and Jean Grey was going to stay dead. The problem with retconning a character's history is that you establish there is nothing to prevent a later writer/editor/corporate-a$$#*!& from ordering a second retcon undoin

Re:Everyone is pissing on Superman's history

[gmhowell]

I've been a Bats fan longer than Supes, and the stuff they've done with both his and Dick Grayson's origins is even more pathetic than John Byrne playing with Superman's power levels.

I've been culling titles from my pull list at the comic shop. I've plucked off some minor offenders, but I'm afriad that it's time to start kicking off some of the big boys. The problem is that with the Batman and Superman titles, the writers change every couple of issues. So when this writer does a story, Action Comics is gre