Today, DC Comics announced their new publisher (it's been a while since longtime DC publisher Paul Levitz was politely escorted out the door back in September as part of corporate restructuring intended to make DC a more nimble entertainment property machine for Warner Brothers). It turns out that the new publisher at DC is actually three people: Former DC Executive Editor Dan DiDio and comics artist Jim Lee will now be co-publishers, while comics writer Geoff Johns was named Chief Creative Officer.
Here's what I think this means: Prepare for DC Comics to crawl even further up its own asshole. The person I'm most excited for here is Jim Lee, whose Wildstorm imprint is actually one of the better superhero publishers in the business right now; they take chances with smaller books (like Red Herring, which I'm enjoying quite a bit), and Lee is reportedly taking charge of DC's electronic initiatives (like the Massively Multiplayer DC Universe game that's been in the works for a while now) because he's been the most forward-thinking of the three.
But Geoff Johns is a terrible writer, and Dan DiDio encourages the worst in him.
(Much more after the jump)
All of Johns' ideas are the same stupid things that six-year-olds who have just started reading comics think would be totally awesome ("What if there was a Red Lantern and a Purple Lantern and a whole bunch of other colors and they all fought the Green Lantern?" "What if we did a sequel to Crisis on Infinite Earths and called it Infinite Crisis?" "What if there was an evil Superboy that ripped people's arms off?") It's impossible to get new readers interested in comics Geoff Johns writes because they all reference comics that were popular when Johns was a kid. Naturally, everyone who is around Johns's age—say, 30 to 40—loves this shit because it pushes their nostalgia buttons. And DC (and, to a lesser extent, Marvel) make all their publishing money out of milking the same tiny (and shrinking) group of buyers for everything they're worth. But these books are impenetrable for all but the most valiant of new readers.
DiDio, too, is obsessed with bringing out all the old characters and concepts, brushing them off, and trying them again. There is nothing wrong with doing this in comic books (I could read Kamandi and Space Cabbie reboots for the rest of my life, and I mean that completely seriously), but DiDio's way of resurrecting concepts is tying them down in the same sluggish continuity and forcefully gritty flavor as the rest of his line. And they never work out.
DC Comics needs a publisher who will allow the properties to change, and who will also allow them to be accessible to more people than the modern superhero comic reader. That might mean shaking off some of the fanboys, but that's not a bad thing at this point. These characters have clearly proven—on television, in video games and movies—that millions upon millions of people are interested in them. But a tiny fraction of that audience actually reads the comics. That's because the comics are bad. And these three people as publishers won't do anything to change that.
