By Zack Quaintance — This was a weird week, in that I saw all a lot of chatter on social media about how comics news was going down...but I struggled a little bit to figure out what that news was. Generally, this means there’s either a controversy or a new Big 2 event that slipped right by me. Anyway! I was over here having a week of my own, and, as always, there were things I liked and didn’t like.

Let’s check them out!

DC Black Label and Hill House

It was a hell of a week for DC’s efforts to sort of branch out from its shared superhero universe comics publications. It was doing this on two fronts. The first was its Black Label books, which featured new monthly installments of Joker Killer Smile and Wonder Woman: Dead Earth. With DC in crisis (heh) over sagging superhero trade sales, it’s not hard to envision a future where these kinds of books actual replace long-running continuity titles. Although we’re not quite there yet. 

Meanwhile, DC’s Hill House horror comics rolled out what felt like two key issues this week — The Plunge, which is it’s Stuart Immonen-illustrated, fifth (and final for now) title, and Low, Low Woods #3, which is shaping up to be the best and most complex comic coming out from the Big 2. Just tremendous stuff, and I like it a lot.

Big 2 Creators Going Creator-Owned

The 2010s in monthly direct market comics were perhaps most notable for a paradigm shift. For many years, the defacto career trajectory was that creators would make their names doing indie stuff or their own books, and then parlay that into higher-profile (and better paying) Big 2 work. Last decade, saw that reverse like a river changing its current, with writers in particular going the other way, including like Brian K. Vaughan, Greg Rucka, Kieron Gillen, Rick Remender, Kelly Sue DeConnick, and I don’t know how many others. 

I’d started to wonder if the financial realities of this (not every creator-owned book gets a five-season TV show, after all) making it less than feasible. Then this week BOOM! Studios announces Tom Taylor and Al Ewing, who have both been writing some great Big 2 work, were doing new original titles with them. It’s encouraging, and I like it, although I still feel like the future of the business ultimately lies in original graphic novels that forego monthly periodical chapters all together, but I digress. Check out the happy fellows below, Al Ewing on the left (who is teaming with Simone di Meo on a book called We Only Find Them When They’re Dead), and Tom Taylor on the right (who is teaming with Daniele Di Nicuolo on a book called Seven Secrets).

IDW Keeps Rolling Out Original Books

This week I also got a press relese from IDW touting the fact that it had three new original comics coming this year, plus a re-up of one of our favorites from last year, Canto. I’m still miffed at them for now sticking with Shelly Bond’s roundly excellent Black Crown imprint (them nixing that last year is definitely something I don’t like), but more original ideas getting taken to full comics form by publisher’s with existing market share and distribution mechanisms is something I do like.

Those books are:

• Chained to the Grave by writers Brian Level & Andy Eschenbach, and artist Kate Sherron

• Sea of Sorrows by writer Rich Douek and artist Alex Cormack

• Bermuda by writer John Layman and artist Nick Bradshaw

• Canto and the Clockwork Fairies by writer David M. Booher and artist Drew Zucker

And the covers follow…

Bad Idea

One thing a lot of other comics people didn’t like is Bad Idea, a new publisher that has some non-convetional distribution plans. The short of it is that they’re not going to use Diamond Distributors and thus will have a much smaller reach than most publishers, which looks a lot like deliberate scarcity. Now, people articulated a pretty diverse range of reasons for not liking this, but I think the core issue is that people in the comics space have been conditioned to both love and fear scarcity.

Exclusive availability is perhaps more prevalent in the comics (which, let’s face it, is a heavily consumerist medium that needs to sell constantly because the profit margins are so low). We have retailer exclusives, con exclusives...exclusives exclusive everywhere. At the same time, many of us in comics grew up having to hunt down individual issues and things. So, we kind of like the hunt...but we don’t like losing the hunt, which is a fear that Bad Idea has thoroughly evoked.

So yeah, I get the issues with it, but I had a chance to talk with the guys involved and I really don’t think the concern is founded. You can read our whole chat here, but these guys want to sell their comics to everyone who wants them. Their weird distribution plans are part PR stunt and part an effort to mitigate financial risk, to put it reductively. Anyway, I like what they’re saying, and I’m going to give them a shot.

Jon Davis-Hunt and Jordie Bellaire Teaming Up

This last item is one I like and don’t like at the same time. Crazy, I know. I love that artist Jon Davis-Hunt and colorist Jordie Bellaire are teaming up. That’s one very very good creative team, but, unfortunately, I don’t really like the title they’re teaming up on, which is Shadowman from Valiant. Valiant, in my opinion has been limping along a bit the past year or so since corporate movement resulted in their leadership leaving (and forming Bad Idea, coincidentally). Anyway, Davis-Hunt is one of my favorite artist and I really think he should be a superstar at this point after doing what is quite possible the best visual storytelling on any superhero book in recent memory with The Wild Storm. So, yeah, a like and a don’t like there.

Any rate, hell of a cover for Shadowman #1…

And now I’m off to run a few miles near where I live in Washington, D.C., which is freezing but sunny today in a way that reminds me of the light in the refrigerator. Cheers!

Read this week’s comic book reviews here!

Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.