Basement X

I don't mean to go on a rant here but I kind of want to so bear with me.

Six months ago DC cancelled the Brave & the Bold title without any advance notice. There was nothing regarding the cancellation on the sites or from DC and DC did not address the cancellation until several months later. DC's reason for cancelling B&B was that they also had Batman: The Brave in the Bold on tv and did not want to risk confusing the fans.

Today I was reading an interview on CBR with John Rozum about Xombi. Rozum initially wanted Xombie under Vertigo but DC decided that it should be placed in the mainstream. Again DC's reasoning was that since there was already an "iZombie" title in Vertigo, they did not want to confuse the fans by placing another similar sounding title in Vertigo.

Wtf? Why does DC think that all of their consumers are brain dead morons who will lose their shit if they see two similar titles on the shelves? I know its got to be a bullshit reason but still, please come up with something better; it sounds so condescending. The whole point of Vertigo is that it's a mature line of comics so I'm assuming those who buy the "mature" also have basic reading comprehension skills that allows them to read the name of the title and discern that although it may be similar to another Vertigo title, it is in fact altogether different.

DC has like 30 Bat or bat related titles, 25 Superman or Superman related titles, 15 Green Lantern titles and will have about a 100 Flash titles out this summer for Flashpoint. Aren't they concerned how confused the fans will get? If DC cancelled B&B because JMS left, just say it. No one's really going to care. Internet bitching will ensue (like now) but it won't really matter.

One last thing (and Marvel is guilty of this too). I was reading the solicts for the upcoming July titles and one of them was for the Aftermath of the Green Lantern War. The marketing taglne was: "Forget everything you know about the Green Lantern corp. History" I feel like every 6 months DC & Marvel ask us to forget everything we know about (insert major character/team) here when they're hyping up the next event. I know its all just marketing hype but it still sounds really ridiculous. According to Marvel & DC at this point I should only have about 4 months worth of knowledge about GL, Batman, Captain America, WW, Avengers, DD, Punisher, Spider-man and the JLA given that they've asked me to forget everything I knew about the aforementioned characters.

Thank you for listening.

I agree with you. I'm also wondering if the Vertigo line isn't almost being phased out like the Wildstorm line was. Swamp Thing is back, Constantine is coming to the DCU Proper, and a lot of other series are limited runs or pre planned it seems, other than Fables. It makes me wonder if this news as well wouldn't conform to a loss of new Vertigo titles to help phase the imprint out.


And I too am sick of "Forget everything you know..", "This issue, everything changes!", "Nothing will be the same after.." and so on. It's just the same rehashing of hype to push the newest idea but doesn't really get me interested or excited to read a book. It's just like the constant flow of 'news' and 'interviews' where the writer/editor/artist constantly just says "I can't really talk about that yet" and that's an ok answer to every question. I get there are limitations on what you can say, but don't even have an interview if you can't answer a damn question. A lot of these panels at cons, after I read about them, seem to be totally worthless because of this.

For a long time DC has wanted to keep the Vertigo line as a place for non-similar-universe titles to occur. Hellblazer will continue, but I'd expect a lot more titles that are completely self-contained (such as how The Unwritten will never cross over with iZombie because they're completely different universes)