By Zack Quaintance — This week we’re launching a pair of new columns, one discussing Marvel Comics and the other DC. This post — as the above headline hopefully makes obvious — is the column dedicated to DC. Later this week, we’ll be publishing our first Marvel column, which will have a different voice who I’m very excited to welcome to the site (but also, congrats to those of you tired of hearing me go on and on and on!).

Anyway. Today I’d like to start this series of DC DIGRESSIONS by talking about the ambitions for this column, about the type of content you expect to find in this space, and about the guiding themes that will shape the way I approach DC coverage in the weeks and months to come. First things first, however — logistics. I’m not entirely sure how often this column will appear, but I promise you it will be at least once a month and no more frequently than once per week. Promise.

As far as what this column will be about, I have a thought that will perhaps shape all of these pieces in one way or another, and that thought is that DC Comics is, perhaps more than any other publisher, currently undergoing a sustained period of change. What will DC Comics look like next year? We don’t know, and there’s a mix of excitement and trepidation to that that should make for fascinating discussion.

In the simplest terms, DC seems to no longer be playing the game, as it were, and competing with Marvel Comics and other publishers (but, let’s be real, with Marvel) for a limited slice of consumers within the comic book direct market (a slice that is by many indications shrinking). DC is instead interested in taking its collection of 80-year-old characters known the world over, and selling graphic sequential stories about them to more consumers, doing so by publishing de-siloed content it can market across channels: digital, direct market, bookstore, mass market retailer, etc.

This has already manifested itself in expansion of some new initiatives and contraction of others. We’ve seen DC move to publishing online-exclusive stories daily, we’ve seen DC roll out publications for mass market retailers like Wal-Mart, and we’ve seen DC sink more resources and recruit new talent to create graphic novels aimed at young readers, surely having taken note of the sales juggernauts in that space, which include Raina Telgemeier and Dave Pilkey, wondering, “Hey! Can’t we replicate that success with Batman!?”

At the same time, this has meant a shift of the resources and emphasis dedicated to the monthly periodical publishing line that has long comprised the publisher’s direct market in-continuity superhero universe. You know, the one many comics fans consider the real DC. In the last two to three years, we’ve seen a reduction in monthly titles within that line, the departure of key comics people (ranging from co-publisher and fierce monthly comics advocate Dan DiDio, to art and presentation expert SVP Mark Chiarello) from the offices in Burbank, and major new plans for those books scuttled.

With all that in mind, my simple answer is that I don’t know what DC Comics will look like next year...but I’m excited to cover the developments as they come. Most recently, for example, DC announced that it is sever ties with Diamond Comics Distribution, which has shipped its monthly books to local comic shops across the country for the past 20 years, choosing instead to go with a pair of smaller, nascent-distributors DC essentially pushed into existence during the crisis as well as its current book market distributor. Does this signify an eventual intent to move away from its monthly single issue publications all together? Or is this just a symptom of a business relationship it felt was no longer in its best interest? Time, of course, will tell.

But it’s not going to be all behind the scenes stuff! In addition, this space will feature discussion of current titles, news related to stories, and all things DC Comics being buzzed about on Comics Twitter.

That’s all for this first introductory column, which I’m going to conclude with a series of short thoughts about this week’s DC Comics releases, something I plan to do each week moving forward…

DC Comics for the Week of June 9, 2020

Batman Secret Files #3 was a very good comic. Maybe it’s because we’ve just undergone one of the longer new Batman content droughts, but I had a great time with it. I also enjoyed seeing a list of different, younger and more diverse creators get a chance to tell stories with the character, including Vita Ayala, Dan Watters, Sumit Kumar, Mariko Tamaki, Andie Tong, and others. If you read one DC book this week, I’d probably say make it this one, which has plenty of content for folks not keeping track with the main Batman title.
The big thing with Batman #92 is to introduce a new Joker sidekick/love interest, Punchline, filling a void left by Harley Quinn, whose popularity and character development has grown her out of that role. To me so far, the whole thing is feeling really forced, in a way that makes me wonder if this character has a long-term future…
In the Flash #755, Reverse Flash is dastardly and I’m very much here for it. This run’s biggest strengths (for better or worse) have come through sort of remixing classic Flash themes and battles, and with the end of it upon us, I’m all for finishing up with Eobard Thawne as the big bad.
The Joker 80th Anniversary 100-Page Super Spectacular #1 has some decent stories in it, with the Scott Snyder and Jock 10-pager standing out, but if you’re suffering Joker fatigue (as so many of us are), it’s still not likely to appeal to you.
I love Lois Lane as a character, I like writer Greg Rucka’s work quite a bit, and I’m a fan of Bendis’ overarching Superman saga...and I’ve enjoyed this Lois Lane series, including this week’s Lois Lane #11. However, this has really developed into a series you have to be reading basically as it comes out, given how often its story ties into things happening elsewhere. That’s not something I would have predicted for this book, and maybe it’s also not ideal. Basically, I think this is a strong series that is haunted by a specter of what a more self-contained, thorough exploration of journalist Lois Lane and her power within the DCU would have looked like.

Finally, this was a fun thing that went around Comics Twitter once again…which DC Logo is your favorite? I’m with the masses who love the 1976 logo, although if you have to change it, I don’t think the current logo is all that bad…what do you think?

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