Tag: DC

Recent tweets seemed to indicate that Rob Liefeld and DC were not exactly on the same page on the books he was writing at...

What happens whan an immovable lesbian object hits an unstoppable asexual force? As revealed by Entertainment Weekly today, they apparently have unconvincing heterosexual sky sex.

Due to his comedy stylings in the upcoming Robot Chicken DC special, Aquaman gets his own Robot Chicken variant cover for issue #12. We actually find this gaudy cover quite invigorating.

So, I finally saw THE DARK KNIGHT RISES...yes, yes I know. In my defense, I tried seeing it twice and it was sold out and then I had a hard time finding three spare hours. And also...well, I'm not the biggest fan of the Nolan Batman trilogy. I get why it is so beloved and all, but the filmmaking is often sloppy to my tastes. (The horrible sound editing in DKR being one example.) Anyway, I did enjoy it, even though it was so lax in its storytelling. And I kept getting distracted by things. Like Catwoman's high heels. As soon as she appeared, I wondered "How is she running in those high heels?" And as if to answer my question, some hapless gunsel asks the same question in the film and Catwoman shows that they are really fearsome weapons. Got it.

It's nearly a year later, and retailer Brian Hibbs is first out of the gate with an analysis of the New 52, a year later and he says it was good. An attached chart shows all the books up significantly for the year, and more importantly, as Bob Wayne promised at Comic-Con last year, the New 52 actually enlarged the pie with some new readers:

We knew the crossovers were coming, but as things go, this one sounds fairly modest -- a mere three-issue tale spanning Supers Man, Boy and Girl as they face the menace of the shirtless, alien terror, H'el, who is so horrible he wears his cape around his waist like a skirt. Sounds pretty basic and maybe even jumponable? Going by the cover art, though, it looks like some injury-to-the-arm is headed our way.

Jaws dropped around the comics movies-o-sphere yesterday when Variety boldly announced that Ben Affleck might direct a Justice League movie. The story made a bit of sense—although the less said about his acting career the better, Affleck is growing in stature as a director, even if a three-ring circus like a JL movie would tax anyone but D.W. Griffith or Michael Bay.

Well, despite what you're thinking Affleck's directing career—THE TOWN and GONE BABY GONE—is much admired within the halls of Warners. So much so that they are thinking of giving over the proposed Justice League film to Affleck. After all, he played a superhero once. He also knows Kevin Smith personally.

After a successful roll-out at C2E2—and in light of how artists everywhere are doing it themselves—DC Collectibles is making more than 20 new posters available at their online store, all in the highly designed style that has become so popular with things like the Alamo Drafthouse and so on. Can we say, it's about time? You can see all the prints here—no creators given, alas, in the licensed style of the Warners and Disney stores, but there are some nice items.

In May, DC reminded us that the old sales-boosting tricks still work. In June, we're reminded how short-lived those sales increases are. Coming out of the "Night of the Owls" crossover, the Batman line basically dropped right back to its previous levels, and the same applies to other titles participating in other crossovers in May; second, DC cut many of its variant-cover editions in June, with predictable results; third, the six replacement "New 52" titles all show second-issue drops between 20% and 44% in June; finally, a range of "New 52" titles display bigger-than-usual drops for no readily available reason in June, so it seems retailers weren't done yet trying to catch up with actual demand, after all. As a result of all this, DC's numbers were actually slightly down in June, despite the Before Watchmen launch and despite the fact that DC published two more DC Universe (and one more Vertigo) titles than they did in May. The DC Universe imprint's estimated average comic-book unit sales dropped from 39,179 units in May to 37,599, total unit sales from 2.69 million to 2.67 million, and total dollar sales from $9.05 million to $8.98 million. On the up side, though, the numbers are still golden overall, thanks, of course, to the four juggernaut debut issues of the Before Watchmen line, all of which made the Top 10 and cleared between 110,000 and 120,000 units each. Consequently, average DC Universe unit sales were still the 25th highest ever since March 2003, total DC Universe unit sales the 8th highest, and total DC Universe dollar sales the 6th highest. While it seems unlikely that DC will be able to sustain these types of sales levels through the rest of the year, it's well worth mentioning: They're doing very well right now.

We're told that today, August 1st, 2012 marks DC Senior Vice President, Sales of DC Comics Bob Wayne's 25th anniversary at DC, that's a pretty astonishingly long run and there aren't too many people who have been at the same place in the industry for longer.

By Jeff Trexler

-- Whatever the merits of the latest summary judgment motion in the dispute over the Superman copyright, its supporting exhibits bring together a number of important documents in two accessible filings.