The other day, a rumor started going around that DC Comics would be splitting certain comic book story pages in half, placing half-page ads on the same pages as art. Well, it turns out that that rumor is true.
This evening, Chris Burnham (Batman Incorporated, Nameless) tweeted these photos:
When Bleeding Cool first broke the story, Rich Johnston indicated that artists had been told to draft their stories with these ads in mind, so they shouldn’t dramatically change the flow of the story. However, they do change the overall presentation of the book and limit the sorts of panel layouts that can exist on pages designed to be displayed with ads. Chris isn’t a fan of the ads themselves, either.
I’m not against these ads, but I do worry about the artistic integrity of the comic books they appear in. Books that don’t use traditional panel layouts like Sandman: Overture couldn’t have these ads incorporated into them, and I hope that if DC continues this integrative practice, that they don’t encroach upon the artistic freedom of their creative teams.
UPDATE: An earlier version of the article indicated that Chris was upset with the job DC did integrating the art with the advertising. This is incorrect. He was displeased with the production of the ad itself.
It’s Oscar Eve! I’ll toss out a few Oscar Predictions towards the bottom of today’s round-up, but let’s get to what’s making headlines today in the world of comics-based entertainment.
– In a piece about a possible future Gal Gadot project, Deadline has reported that the actress will begin filming Wonder Woman in the fall. If that’s indeed the case, the never quite made official release date of June 23rd, 2017 sounds pretty likely to be met for the Michelle MacLaren production.
– The official Daredevil Netflix series twitter feed teased out the following photo yesterday:
The indication being that Daredevil’s father Jack Murdock fought The Absorbing Man at some point in the series’ history. Though, depending on the age that Creel is portrayed as, this could present a bit of a continuity issue since Creel appeared as an adversary of the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. team during the first few episodes of this current season. Perhaps his power keeps him from aging?
– Sons of Anarchy star Kim Coates has been cast as the lead in the upcoming feature film adaptation of Officer Downe, based on the Image comic by Joe Casey and Chris Burnham. Officer Downe will mark the directorial debut of Shawn Crahan aka Clown, co-founder of the metal act Slipknot, while Casey is penning the script.
– And finally, Supergirl now has a matriarchal figure for Melissa Benoist‘s Kara, as Nashville‘s Laura Benanti has signed on to play Alura Zor-El. Alura will be a recurring role in the series, offering her daughter guidance that echoes through space and time.
While Torsten will have a much better and comprehensive write-up on The Beat shortly, for whatever it’s worth, here are my Oscar predictions for tomorrow night in the major categories.:
Best Picture: Birdman
Best Director: Richard Linklater, Boyhood
Best Actor: Michael Keaton, Birdman
Best Actress: Julianne Moore, Still Alice
Best Supporting Actor: J.K. Simmons, Whiplash
Best Supporting Actress: Patricia Arquette, Boyhood
Best Original Screenplay: Wes Anderson and Hugo Guinness, The Grand Budapest Hotel
Best Adapted Screenplay: Damien Chazelle, Whiplash (no guts, no glory over here!)
Best Cinematography: Emmanuel Lubezki, Birdman
Best Editing: Sandra Adair, Boyhood
(Spoilers!) Well, we can’t say that we didn’t know it was coming. From early on in the run, Grant Morrison has said in interviews and at convention appearances that his six year Batman run would end in heartbreak.
Even for those who somehow missed DC’s massive spoiler alert, Morrison’s obvious love for the character that everyone initially hated, then came to love, marked his doom. Along with, of course, the bizarrely popular reset button that every superhero character possesses, demanding that writers put their “toys back in the box” when they leave.
It’s perhaps testament to Damian Wayne’s popularity that even as the death promoting cover leaked, with the events spelled out by the publisher and revealed by the writer, that fans first hoped the “death” was another misdirect, and now cling to the idea that no one in comics ever truly dies. And that latter trope is now partly the problem with the whole concept of death and loss within the superhero genre – when heroes die every week only to return weeks, months or years later, what impact does killing them even have anymore? Especially Robins. For every fan feeling a little sad at this newest revelation, there are ten more dismissing the gravity of the plot out of hand, with a dismissive, “he’ll be back”.
Morrison of course – love him or hate him – is not known for casually killing his characters. Every plot thread and complex idea in the last six years has been leading up to this moment; the culmination of the twisted war between parents that has their spoiled and far wiser child at the centre. To dismiss this latest character death as nothing more than controversy seeking is to underestimate the intricate planning behind these events.
Morrison didn’t create Damian, but he moulded him into one of the strongest characters in Gotham, giving us a Robin that was truly different from his predecessors. Playing the dour Boy Wonder to Dick Grayson’s chipper Batman revitalised the concept of the Dark Knight in a whole new direction; the resulting Batman Incorporated somewhat hamstrung by the narrow confines of the continuity obsessed New 52.
That particular pairing resurfaces in Batman Incorporated #8. We’ve seen over the past few issues that Damian is not the Batman of the future that Bruce assumed. Instead that honour goes to an unnamed monster, a bizarre adult clone of Damian who his mother has raised from the belly of a whale. A leviathan. Curiously enough, leviathans and whales have been swimming around my own mind recently; from my re-reading of Mike Carey and Peter Gross’ The Unwritten, to the recent season of Supernatural, and the arguments of Thomas Hobbes. Symbolism is usually a tad more subtle in the works of Morrison, but the whale is such a potent allegory that it is no shock to see it break through.
Chris Burnham plays his pages mostly straight, with some fantastic fragmented panel layouts and one of those amazing scatter pages picturing the most frantic fight scene in the book. Glass and broken glass is a repeated motif once more, both fracturing Batman’s struggle to escape his confines and heralding the entrance of the various Robins. The near colourless clone is draped in a cloak of fire at the climax, mirroring the cape of Damian in a hellish form. The final splash page brings together glass, fire and rain with deceptively simple ease; the final page finishing on an extra tiny panel sequence, another of Burnham’s signatures, now fading to black.
This issue is all about the Robins, with Batman only appearing on two pages. Damian rides to the rescue, briefly saving Grayson on the way, as Tim fights off the Leviathan henchmen and saves a damsel in distress (Ellie). With an army of brainwashed children on his heels, Damian starts cracking skulls (because children on children violence isn’t quite as worrying as adults beating on them) before ending the fight with his quick thinking. Not quick enough however, as our other former Robin, Grayson bursts on to the scene to save him from gunfire.
I won’t lie, having those two team up again is, well, awesome. There’s a little foreshadowing in Damian’s praise for Grayson which sounds more than a little like a goodbye. “We were the best Richard. No matter what anyone thinks.” Knowing what is to come, that is perhaps the real moment of sadness. The final battle comes down to Damian and his demonic twin, with both Tim and Grayson laying broken on the floor.
As Damian begs his mother to stop, to call off her monster, he remains sure that he is the only one who can reach her. He steps in to save Ellie from the monster, remembering his promise to his father that he would never kill again…
His faith is misplaced. His last word is “mother”. Talia weeps, Bruce is too late, and Damian dies a hero. And unseen, I can’t help but think of the little kitten back home waiting on him.
Damian was a character nobody should have been able to relate to – a poor little rich kid begging the attention of his parents. And yet, Batman himself is equally unrelatable – a playboy millionaire with a disturbing obsession with crime-fighting, a detective with near superhuman psychological barriers, and often just a big brooding emo kid. But we love him, of course, and not just for his gadgets. He’s human and so his achievements seem that much greater than the big Boy Scout. He is ancient and iconic, a creature of the night that battles for good, a modern day Sherlock Holmes.
What Morrison did, stitching together that vast history into one epic lifespan, broke him away from the lone warrior teetering on the edge of madness and made him human once more. Of course that Batman would have a son, and even come to learn to forgive the transgressions of all his family. He even, dare I say, began to see shades of grey and inspired his son to choose heroism over villainy.
And Damian the brat became Damian the loveable brat. With his ribbing of Grayson and his fondness for his menagerie of pets, his occasional wisdom beyond his years, and most of all his tiredness with the ridiculous war between his parents, Damian became perhaps one of the most popular newer characters DC has.
Had. Of course he could come back, of course he probably will. The fall out will last so long and then an editor or writer will decide that that particular toy needs to come back out of the box. Let’s have a new Robin. Let’s kill them too.
But make no mistake, this is a real death. With Morrison soon to leave Batman behind, this is the end of his Damian. He introduced the character as we now know him back in 2006, as a murderous little psychopath and his mother’s pawn. Now he has ushered him out, as a genuine Robin, a beloved son, and a true hero. And as cliche as some superhero deaths may be, this really is the end of an era.
*sob!*
Batman Incorporated #8
Writer: Grant Morrison
Artist: Chris Burnham, Jason Masters (p.6-9)
Colourist: Nathan Fairbairn
Cover Artist: Chris Burnham
Letters: Taylor Esposito
Editor: Michael Marts, Rickey Purdin
Publisher: DC
If you like, try: Growing your heart three sizes!
Crass. What numbskull thought this was a good idea. Sheesh.
Now for the real questions:
-Will consumers be getting less pages of story for the same cover price?
-How are artists’ rates affected by this?
That looks hideous. If I get books with ads like that, I’ll tape blank paper over the ads, which would be better to look at than that horror. I hate ads in general, but full page ads are easily ignored. I just turn the page, so I suppose this is their way to force me to look at them. I’d sooner give up reading DC comics than put up with ads like that. And why would I want to look at that guy’s face, anyway? They can’t say they’re not intrusive. If they’re on the same page where we’re expecting story, they are intrusive. I’ve been thrown off by full page ads, so this is just going to be worse. Much worse.
I’m out. I was down to two DC comics, and I’m dropping them.
Guess my days of reading DC are over. I myself have just started a comic book publisher called Ecliptic Comics Publishers. I would never be so money hungry to place adds on the same pages I have story. DC has really stooped to an all time low. Kind of glad, makes it easier for companies like mine to work our way up when DC is ticking off their customers.
I was picking up six titles in June, but I won’t be now. TOTALLY unacceptable!
As Bill Hicks said “Once you do an advert you’re off the artistic roll call for life.” I understand the need of advertising to pay for printing etc, but when marketing start to fight, and win, with editorial you know something’s wrong within a company.
There are few independent ads in DC and Marvel comic books.
Where they exist is on the covers.
Inside, it’s all house ads, corporate cousins, or licensees.
DC did this before, back in the 70s. Magazines do it all the time, although those pages usually aren’t visually dense.
I suspect these ads will also appear in the digital comics, allowing DC to count those copies sold as part of the total circulation? (And it’s more difficult to strip out that ad from a scan.)
As for titles like Overture… you did notice that all of the advertising appears in the back, and doesn’t interrupt the story at all? Plus, for an art-driven title like that, DC can eschew the ad and raise the cover price.
Just going to increase trade paperback waiting. This is like drinking salt water to cure thirst.
God, certainly not incitative to go back reading DC universe comics. We pay more and more and have less and less.
I can’t believe people are actually claiming they are going to quit reading DC comics over this. Talk about over-reaction….
There’s no indication here that anyone is losing a page of art. What would normally be one full-page ad and one full-page piece of art are now two half-pages of each. It all adds up the same. And given the theme of Twix’s “left-side vs. right-side” it makes perfect sense. At the same time, unless another advertiser has the same sort of theme to their advertising, I doubt it will happen again.
Yet another sigh-inducing over-reaction to change by the comics-reading audience. You’d almost think someone’s costume had been retconned or something.
Complaints from the writers and artists who’ll have to accommodate the format constraints … those are legit. Designing an arbitrary page to be split into two half pages is awkward, and may not fit what they’re trying to do at that point in the story. It’s an annoying constraint, like prohibiting the use of double-page spreads for splashes and other two-page story layouts, because they might interfere with repagination in a TPB. Creators have a reason to grumble about this.
But readers complaining about half of a two-page spread being given to an ad are missing the point that they already see this every time they turn a page and one of them is a full-page ad. DC and Marvel have done this forever. The only difference here is that usually the ad page and the story page are split left/right rather than top/bottom. That’s it. It’s the same amount of story. The same amount of ad space. It’s laid out differently.
Different. That seems to be real reason behind these fantrums. I remember my cousin with Aspergers reacted like this when the movie theater he went to every Friday night first started running non-movie ads along with movie trailers, saying he was going to stop going to movies because of it. But he didn’t, because ultimately, it’s just another 30-second sales pitch, and once he’d sat thru a couple, he learned to deal with it, ad now he watches them like all the other ads before the movie starts. If he can cope with that, I certainly hope that DC’s audience can cope with this.
Jason A. Quest:
Readers like myself hate this for the same reasons creators hate it: it breaks up the flow and prevents full page spreads and discourages creative panel layouts, which we like. These are legitimate concerns.
Off the subject, I am extremely sorry I clicked on your profile. Gross, dude.
This is nothing new, old is the new new.
I really can’t imagine why they thought this would be a good idea. It disrupts the story and creates more work shuffling around panels when it comes time to release the comic in trade paperback form. There are plenty of good reasons why this kind of advertising hasn’t really been used for forty years.
DC has made so many blunders and weird decisions like this over the past few years, and it makes me wonder if anybody actually knows what they’re doing.
why not do what movies have done for years > product placement. Just have people eating twixes inside the comic world. maby batman has a case of them sitting in his house. if anyone has read the comic powers > then you know sony has made the live action version of it. you want to know what was placed all through it ? right , sony products. from computers to tvs. So maby they need ads but there ways around it then to put ads like this.
The most newsworthy aspect of this story is that DC is actually putting creative effort into ad sales. That’s a good thing for the comics biz. For years it was basically a shoulder shrug and 8 house ads. It’s awesome that a national brand thinks exposure in comics is cool.
With today’s increased sensitivity to the graphic make-up of comics by both the artists and the readers, this is a pretty yucky and tone deaf move. I won’t lose to much sleep about it, but at three or four dollars a pop, I don’t think there needs to be any more reasons to piss off mainstream publishers dwindling readership.
And if I may, a couple of historical notes:
The half page side-by-side ads were a layout of Marvel Comics (not DC) around 1970. This was a cost cutting measure to produce one less page of art, bringing the story page count down to 19 pages (from the previous 20 pages per book.)
DC (mainly throughout the 1960’s) employed third of a page ads (with two thirds of a story page above it.) This type of ad usually appeared at the end of a story and/or a story chapter. In this regard, it was a bit less disruptive than Marvel’s layout since those ads never appeared on facing pages and would be at natural break points in the book. (And most of the time they were filled by those cool DC house ads!) However, the motive was still the same as Marvel’s — three of those broken pages in a book would equal one less page of story and art that was needed to be produced.
Perhaps we’ll start seeing product placement directly integrated into artwork in the future.
Or corporate sponsored storylines:
“Batman meets the M&Ms! The Bitter Secret of Dark Chocolate, REVEALED!”
“UPDATE: An earlier version of the article indicated that Chris was upset with the job DC did integrating the art with the advertising. This is incorrect. He was displeased with the production of the ad itself.”
If I were an artist at DC I WOULD be upset with advertising being integrated into my art/page/panel layout.
It’s like placing a commercial mid-scene of a tv show.
Goodbye DC …. you don’t care about what the fans want any more. It’s all about the dollar! Besides, a lot of your advertised merchandise won’t be available outside the US. How thoughtful. You still think your country is the centre of the world!