After taking a look at Jenna Jemma Salume’s absolutely gorgeous Dr. Strange villain redesigns, I was reminded, oddly enough, of Websnark’s post about Dan Didio’s response to that Batgirl fan (the story of which has been making its way around the internets lately). Not so much for the content (which is an excellent essay), but more because in its argument it makes the point that change of this sort is DC’s responsibility, rather than the fans’, in many ways.
Mostly, though, what it comes down to is this: when Dan Didio asks comic fans who say they want to see more female creators working at DC ‘who should I hire?” he’s effectively asking them to do part of his job for him. It’s not my job, as a comics fan, to scout out talent that should be working at DC. Sure, sometimes it’ll become obvious to fans that Indie Creator should – if they are so inclined – be working on a title at the Big Two. But all too often I won’t even know that creator’s name (or gender) offhand because I’ll read a brief work of genius and then forget to read more by them, because there’s only so many hours in the day that I can judge content. But judging content is basically what editors do, and I would expect DC to specifically keep an eye open for talent in the same way that Marvel does. Or in the way that any publishing company does, really. Talent scouting is part of the gig when you’re an editor working for a publishing company, and I would expect Dan Didio could name me a dozen female indie creators he’d like to see working for DC. And if he isn’t able to do that, he should be able to do that.
I mean, by the standard Didio presents, apparently the reason J.T. Krul has a job is because we all demanded it.
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I cannot understand a mind that, in the year 2011, gives Rob Liefeld a book of his own. Was anyone crying out for Hawk and Dove? This relaunch was the perfect opportunity for DC to get 52 great writers, 52 great artists, pair them up, and say “pick ANY DC superhero, pitch it to us, and we’ll make it happen”. Instead, we get Hawk and Dove. Or a book that, no matter how awesome it ends up being, is still called “Justice League Dark”, I guess so we know how Dark it is. (It’s dark.)
Well, Hawk and Dove I do like… but I don’t like Liefeld doing the work. But I definitely got a B:TAS vibe from that artwork.
Which, is a good thing. (At least to me.) I would like to see a good Dr. Strange comic from Marvel, even if it wasn’t written by you.
When I saw Jemma Salume’s (psst, first-name correction) Dr. Strange art, I thought two things.
The first was, “MightyGodKing needs to see these.” (I’m so glad that you have.)
The second was, “I would read the hell out of a book based on these designs and getting anywhere close to this style.” (Meaning, of course, I would read the hell out of any comic drawn by Jemma Salume, but I’m unsure whether she aspires to actually draw a full book, as opposed to being a concept artist. So I might wish for the former, but if I can’t have that, I’d like to see someone use her designs in a way approaching her interesting and gorgeous style.)
Otherwise: you’re completely correct. The news about this out of SDCC was just depressing — not so much Didio’s dismissive attitude, but the “Yeah!” reaction from fellow con-goers.
Even if Didio isn’t scouting himself, TELL me he can’t afford to hire a couple of knowledgeable staffers to comb the internets for him in search of talent, and deliver it to him in more manageable chunks. (Although, really — Project Rooftop does a nice job of distilling creators into a short-list for you.) Because you also can’t tell me that Didio and DC wouldn’t be basically dismissive of fan attempts to recommend artists and writers to them for hiring.
This seems like you guys want to have your cake and eat it too with this – particularly Holly’s comment about Didio and DC being dismissive of fan recommendations.
It’s the classic story–a comfortable clueless mildly misogynistic boys’ club making sure they essentially keep each other in jobs while sometimes cracking the door open to allow young/new malleable minds to participate (Krul, Tony Bedard, Michael Green, etc).
Contrast to Marvel, who probably doesn’t have that much better a track record on hiring female creators, but at least seems to incorporate some ongoing level of talent scouting on both the writing and art sides.
I couldn’t agree more with Michael above–it would have been exciting to see way more fresh faces and styles on this stuff. Even fresh faces willing to conform to the DC house style/themes with some decent newish ideas. Hell, the effort probably would have been cheaper than whatever Liefield’s page rate is at this point in his career. Instead, it’s a fiercely conservative approach to an idea they are claiming is transformative.
(I honestly care far little than these words suggest, but I do love a good rant sometimes)
MGK has the right of it. I mean, I’m willing to concede that being put on the spot like that can cause ANYONE to experience brainlock, but turning it around into “Well what would YOU do then, huh Ms. Smartypants!?” is, like, one of the dumbest reflexive reactions you can have. If these guys are going to continue to make public speaking appearances it might behoove them to, I dunno, GET SOME PRACTICE IN PUBLIC SPEAKING. ‘Cause goddamn, this is just embarrassing.
People have pointed out that it’s hard, when you’re on the spot, to come up with good answers…which excuses Batgirl not rattling off a bunch of female creators – but not Dan DiDio, who’s job it is to speak in public a lot of the time.
And considering DC has fewer female creators now than they did before the reboot…how about we start with “the ones you had working for you before”
I have this dream where Didio is a Marvel plant to bring down DC…
1st – sick burn on JT Krul. His continued presence in DC’s stable of writers is bizarre.
2nd – I quite agree, scouting talent should be DC editorial’s job. But instead of doing that, they do the job of writers (poorly), dictating plot points, meddling with scripts, and on occasion, writing whole comics (i’m looking at you, Flashpoint tie-ins).
Well, I’d say that asking fans ‘Who do you think we should hire?’ isn’t, by itself, a bad thing; a good talent scout should be looking for talent anywhere qe can, and that includes looking at fans, getting recommendations from the fandom, and so forth. The problem here is that he’s not doing anything else.
Nemryn,
In addition to not looking elsewhere, I highly doubt Didio is seriously listening to fans for ideas. I think fans both in person at cons, online, and via sales, have come out strongly against much of what Didio’s time at DC has resulted in. Sales peaked around the time of what, Identity Crisis/Hush/Infinite Crisis/52? if Didio can be credited with those successes, he should also be faulted for DC’s myriad failures since, like relaunching Green Arrow 5 times in 9 years, having Bat and Super books sell below 30k/month, Justice League being unreadable since 2002, etc.
@Nemryn: There are matters of tone and presentation to consider, though. When Didio says “Well who should we hire, then?” he isn’t asking in the spirit of earnest interest, he’s being snide and dismissive. He’s taking this very valid point and basically turning it into a put-down. And that’s incredibly problematic for SEVERAL reasons, but one MAJOR reason is that even IF he has a point all anybody’s going to take away from the incident is “Dan Didio is a contemptuous douchebag.”
Now in fairness to Didio, open Q&A at Comic Con isn’t exactly the most relaxing, stress-free thing in the world, and a lot of fans DO show up with petty axes to grind and love the opportunity to take potshots at the targets of their ire. It’s understandable that someone’s response then, even to legitimate and well-intended criticism, is going to be to go on the defensive.
But hey, guess what? THAT’S PUBLIC SPEAKING FOR YOU. That shit HAPPENS. It happens every single year and it’s not something anyone who regularly attends an event like this should be unprepared for. And anyone with a halfway competent grasp of public speaking could have taken this person’s issue and, even without ACTUALLY ADDRESSING it in any meaningful fashion whatsoever, handled it in a way that left people feeling satisfied, or at least mollified, rather than pissed off. I mean, c’mon, it’s not like she asked him if he’d stopped beating his wife or anything. This WASN’T a no-win scenario here, Didio is just, to be blunt, not very good at this and it shows.
If I were higher up the food chain at DC comics, someone for whom the words “bottom line” and “shareholders” were integral parts of my career, I’d be asking myself exactly why I should let someone like that be the public face of the company.
Would you care to expand on that a bit, Andrew? In what sense?
When I say that I’m betting Didio and DC would be dismissive of fan attempts to recommend artists and writers to them for hiring, I mean that in the context of the fact that DC does not accept unsolicited submissions or recommendations. So it’s a disingenuous suggestion.
And to be fair to my fellow fans — even if Didio suddenly set up a staff to field fan recommendations, DC would still need to do the work of vetting those recommendations, because a fair number of them would probably be inappropriate for various reasons. In other words, it’s not that easy.
As I said in my original post — my first recommendation would be “hire Jemma Salume”. However, I say that because it’s what I’d like to see happen. I have no idea how practical a suggestion it is; I have no idea if it’s what Salume wants for her career. She may not be someone DC is able to hire. And that comes from the fact that I’m a consumer; it’s not my job to know the industry or to know how to be an agent.
More importantly, though — as Kai says, it wasn’t an honest invitation for the Batgirl fan to same some viable female creators for DC to hire. It was a “gotcha” response meant to make her look stupid.
Actually identifying female creators to hire requires that you make it the job of someone working for the company. It would not actually be that hard for someone who was being paid to do the legwork and the research.
Let me ask this: Why the hell should DC increase female characters with ongoings and creators? Neither brings in all that many sales. Sure, it’s a good PR move to keep USA Today from doing a story about how you hate women but that’s it.
@Michael: The relaunch was a great chance for randomness without any sort of market research?
As for the rest of the article, I don’t think Didio’s asking the fans to do his work. Fact is we don’t know who he’s scouting and who he’s contacted. Even if the fans did have answers to that question for all we know DC has contacted them and been turned down.
Honestly some of the way the questions were asked did smack of fans wanting token writers. Didio asked what the numbers meant to one fan and he had no response so it clearly suggested the numbers meant to him that DC should hire more female writers, not “you don’t have enough of the female perspective” or things like that.
The worry I have is that the current relaunch *is* the product of market research. It bears some signs of focus group testing, and I suspect the “superheroes are new” is related to the television Young Justice — probably YJ used to test the idea, but possibly viewer response.
Of course a hunker-down is going to favor the old boys’ network. That’s what they’re for.
@Steve
DC should hire female creators because it means they get to retain more female readers. If women look around at the DCU and see don’t see themselves represented then they’re likely to decide DC isn’t for them…especially if they’re the kind of fans with creative aspirations since only employing one female writer and one female cover artist in their 50+ books sends the message that they shouldn’t even think about trying to break in.
Wonder Women comics sell badly. For one of DC’s big three, they sell appallingly on a monthly basis.
Wonder Women TPBs apparently sell very well. WW merchandise sells very well.
Here is the disconnect: female readers of WW don’t go into comic shops to buy those titles. They buy them from the book stores who carry them, from Amazon, from anywhere that female readers are able to feel comfortable in the purchase.
Comic books from female writers don’t sell well in comic shops. They can sell exceptionally well in non-comic shop settings. DC’s relaunch is all about going digital and grabbing that market, but I don’t think ripping the pants off WW is going to see a large group of female buyers suddenly line up to grab that title online. (The costume wasn’t the issue; the treatment of it was.)
UnSub,
I don’t think it’s that comics written by women sell poorly. Gail Simone’s stuff sells moderately well. I think the issue is that since there are few women in comics, there are of course even fewer writing the high selling comics. But like, Gail Simone’s comics, or Devin Grayson’s stuff when she was doing Black Widow or Batman, didn’t sell poorly.
I really liked one point made at that Websnark link that’s obvious in retrospect but it had never occurred to me before: “The complaints will continue because the female readership is where all the growth is.”
Along the way, it’s worth mentioning that yes, complaints about sexism in the comic book industry have merit by any standard worth using. For example, the Websnark link calls for gender parity in Justice League, which actually sounds pretty harsh, until you look up the JL’s new lineup and realize that it’s not just “less than 50% women”, it’s less than 15 percent. (Include “additional members” and four out of 14 are women, 29 percent, which is still a huge imbalance, especially if you consider the relative importance of the characters.) That’s ridiculous.
But anyways, forgive the digression. Even if sexism objectively wasn’t a problem, it would still be a smart business decision to try something, anything, to improve female readership. I think it’s safe to say that the industry is not doing well. I’m not a Chicken Little here, and lots of other industries also aren’t doing well, and even if nothing changes there’s still life in the Big Two for a long time yet… but still, not doing well. Publishers need to either get more money for their existing product, or out-compete each other for customers, or expand the market. And I’m pretty sure they’re already scraping the bottom of the barrel on the first two strategies, so that leaves trying to sell comics to people who don’t normally buy them. Hmmm…
@Cyrus: Bingo. Why the hell should DC increase female characters with ongoings and creators? Because they want MONEY, that’s why. And female comics readers are out there in abundance…they just aren’t buying what the Big Two are offering. Maybe, just maybe, making more of an effort to address the endemic sexism of both the product and the industry MIGHT go some way towards bringing some of that ripe, disposable income-laden demographic into the fold. And to be perfectly fucking honest, it’s not like they really have much to lose by trying at this point.
I am ignorant of this J.T. Krul person. Who is he, and what are his sins?
I haven’t read much J.T. Krul beyond a fairly average short story in the last incarnation of Spider-Man Unlimited but I think DC fans tend to associate him with the continued downward spiral of Green Arrow, Arsenal/Red Robin, and the Teen Titans.
Yeah, “Rise of Arsenal” is pretty much what Krul is known for.
Specifically, the 3rd issue, in which Roy Harper, shamed by his erectile dysfunction into throwing away his sobriety, beats up a bunch of guys in an alley to protect a dead cat that he hallucinates is his recently-deceased daughter due to the heroin he smoked.
The Prism Awards honored it for its accurate portrayal of substance abuse and mental illness.
Fabien Nicieza writes Red Robin, and made him awesome…so Morrison had the character sacked.
Sorry, Scavenger was right and I mistyped that.
People are up in arms about Speedy/Arsenal/Red ARROW (Roy Harper).
Nicieza’s revitalization of Robin/Red ROBIN (Tim Drake) is second only to the awesomeness of Miller’s Spoiler/Robin/Batgirl (Stephanie Brown) in the current batbooks.
So naturally neither Steph nor Miller seem to be part of the DCnU and Tim appears to be regulated to tech support in Lobdell’s Teen Titans.
FU DC
(Nicieza’s Legion Lost sounds like it could be cool, though…provided no one gives any thought to how the Legion somehow escaped a line-wide reboot)