Action 20It’s been an… eventful couple of days around DC’s HQs. There’s a little more information slipping out around the Superman and Green Lantern franchises.

First off, Tony Daniel clarified a few things about the Action Comics run he’s drawing and taking over plotting duties on, over at his Facebook page:

Yes, many have heard, Andy Diggle left Action Comics after the first issue. I can only say I feel bad he made that decision. I think it was the wrong one, but that was his choice to make. For the remainder of the arc I’ll be working off his plots to finish out this first arc. So essentially, I become ‘scripter’ in the credits w/ Andy as ‘plotter.’ As for myself, I end my short run after I complete this first arc, which ends with issue 21. This was preplanned since last fall as there is another project I’ll be taking on, and assisting with, a massive project with DC. I still think people will like this arc and I’m staying as true as I can be to Andy’s plans for this story. In the end I hope he’ll find it somewhat recognizable as something he took part in.

He adds in the comment section:

Andy did the hard work already.

It seems Action will be needing an entirely new creative team starting with issue #22.  And the Daniel era will only be three issues.  Those issues will be April-June and the signs are lining up for a big event, likely the long-promised Trinity War, hitting sometime between July and September.

Speaking of Superman, here’s a new theory where they came up with the Superman Unchained  title.  Someone at DC may have been riffing on the new Superman animated feature, “Superman Unbound,” which is set to premiere at WonderCon, prior to a May retail release.  Unbound… unchained… similar concepts.  Here’s a trailer for the animated version.

 

Finally, over in the Green Lantern aisle, Bleeding Cool is hearing reports that DC editorial has backed off plans to kill the John Stewart Green Lantern.  If correct, this would be the latest in a series of miscalculations drawing an immediate reaction getting quickly reversed by DC, including the (temporary) removal of Gail Simone from Batgirl and Orson Scott Card being hired as the first writer for the new Superman digital comic series.  On the other hand, it’s hard to sell a major media outlet on an exclusive about killing off your big character if all the Internet has already written about it, so if you’re still going through with it, you’d need to convince people it wasn’t happening long enough to get your mainstream media placement.  That’s a cynical reality, but mainstream media placements have been a MAJOR component of comic book hero deaths in recent years.

If DC starts talking up vague, but significant events in a future issue of Green Lantern or Green Lantern Corps, there’s going to be a lot of people jumping to the conclusion that John Stewart is buying the farm.  We’ll have to wait and see what happens with this and if DC decides to address the topic directly.  In the unlikely event Fialkov is announced as returning to Green Lantern Corps and Red Lanterns (as Simone returned to Batgirl), it’s a safe bet that editorially suggested death arc isn’t happening.

13 COMMENTS

  1. I don’t think DC or Marvel is capable of getting through even one year without resorting to a kill-off of some kind. I think it would make editorial have withdrawal symptoms like a recovering addict.

  2. If publishers knew what they were doing, they wouldn’t be having such a hard time of it.
    Fialkov gave his reason for leaving, but I wonder what specifically unsettled Diggle.

  3. I don’t think the twenty-tens will be kind to comic books, when it’s looked back on in the future. So many creative team arcs switching off, comic collections are going to look like crap. I was reading X-O Manowar last night (#11), and the art was horrific. Valiant is having a bad time (with the exception of Archer & Armstrong) with keeping a cohesive creative team (especially art) on their titles. Cary Nord has been missing from X-O since issue #4 (the preview of #1’s art the reason I picked up the book in the first place) finally makes it back with issue #11, and this is what we get? Wow. Harbinger has been all over the place, art wise (again, I picked it up based on the first issues art preview.)

    All the comic companies are doing it now. I know it’s been done for a long while, but it seems to be getting worse. Bring in a big name team for the first arc, then slap in a whole bunch of fill-ins, sub par (IMHO) creative teams post first arc. Look at what Marvel is doing with Savage and (regular) Wolverine? Bring’em in for Alan Davis, and Frank Cho, then drop them off by around issue #5. What does this make ME do? Drop the titles. Not only do you only get a temporary reader spike, you lose readers. DC does this huge announcement with Andy Diggle and Tony Daniels taking over Action, only to have Andy quit and Tony announce he was only on it for something like three issues?! Why waste our time. I personally long for the days when someone like John Byrne managed to do a nice long 60 issue run on a book. Even if you have to do rotating artists, do them in issues of four or something. Four, then a nice rotating artist that complements the style, then bring the original guy back, on and on.

    “On-Time” schedules (Hell or high water) along with editorial demands are not gonna be kind to our 2010- comics when we look back. I know some people buy comics for the story, and some for the art (and a smaller group, for both) but nothing gets me to drop a book faster than bad art. Or multiple fill-ins. Anyway, rant over. Just my opinion on the subject.

  4. What’s bothering me is that CBR published a confirmation of the rumour that BC originally published, and then also published the denials (sort of) that Venditti and Segura posted on Twitter. Can you do that?

  5. Thank you for clarifying it, but… can you publish a statement knowing it’s untruthful?.
    My take is that you can only do so if you are also saying it is false, or that you made a mistake, but you can’t have two articles on the same site that contradict each other.
    If CBR confirmed the rumour, they have to stand by that confirmation. I expect DC to disguise the truth whichever way they want (they have Bobbie Chase and Bob Harras for that), but by simply saying “Venditti said this other thing”, you sort of allow them to discredit everybody who said or confirmed that John Stewart was going to die.
    CBR is careful not to step on DC toes, and leave thesemlves some room to maneuver, but they should step on DC’s toes every once in a while, just like The Beat or Comics Alliance do.

  6. I don’t work for The Beat, have no connection to The Beat and, in fact nobody knows me from Adam, but I will say that I have an impeccable informed source that informs me that the death of John Stewart edict was “100 percent” the reason for Joshua Fialkov’s quitting the GL books.

    It’s very sad for me, as a long-time DC fan. I tried to give the New 52 a chance — and enjoyed some of their titles/decisions, but the chaotic changes have soured me on almost everything the company is putting out.

  7. Esteban:
    I don’t think anyone has been untruthful here.
    The timeline is basically:

    Fialkov is hired
    John Stewart dies storyline emerges
    Fialkov quits
    John Stewart death storyline is revealed (by BC, confirmed by CBR and eventually many others)
    With surprise soiled and outcry, DC changes plans
    Segura and Venditti tweet that there are NO CURRENT PLANS for John Stewart to die. Which is true. The plans changed.

    There really hasn’t been lying here, only those who are being more or less discrete.

  8. Have in mind that I’m talking about CBR, not The Beat, but Alex Segura specifically said:

    “Seeing a lot of unverified reports on this. To clarify: John Stewart is not going anywhere.”

    I guess that you could interpret that statement in many ways. The way I read it, is him saying that the rumours about John’s death aren’t true, he calls them “unverified reports”, but CBR said “has confirmed independently that this is the case”, and you have said the same here, hence, it’s not a rumour anymore. They changed their minds, but they did gave the order at some point… it’s kind of the same thing that happened when they fired Gail Simone, with Harras and Chase saying that it never actually happened.

    Venditti also said this: “Unfortunately, some were reporting that we did. But yes, we’re going to tell the story we want.”
    https://twitter.com/robertvenditti/status/315274416349130752

    So, John Stewart was only going to be dead in GLC, but not in the rest of the titles? You can’t have plans for a character that is going to die, even if somebody else is doing the killing.

    You can’t (CBR) just publish an statement that denies the veracity of a rumour/news without pointing out that you believe it to be incorrect/untruthful, that’s my point.

  9. “Unverified” doesn’t mean untrue. Seriously, what is your point, Esteban? NO many negatives in your point I can’t unravel it.

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