I give comics publishers a hard time, but I really don’t have a problem with any marketing stunt they care to pull. Marvel and DC are down to a pretty hard nut of greying fanboys for their core and it takes hard drugs to make a reader’s pulse jump these days. New 52, Marvel Now, whatever … transform all the characters into SexBots and launch the New 69, it’s all fine by me.

I’ve been on the editorial side of the desk, and I have friends doing that job now, and I sympathize with their plight, I really do. And here’s the thing — I’m not the audience, so they damn well shouldn’t listen to me. I buy a little digital, and I buy a collection every now and then, but I’m a total cherry-picker and these dense, continuity-heavy, weekly experiences are of zero interest to me. So do what you do, it’s fine.

The only thing is … the initial enthusiasm that I had for New 52 pretty much began and ended with this podcast. Too many of the books I liked were cancelled (Demon Knights, Frankenstein) or disrupted (Batwoman) for me to be bothered to stick with any of them. I picked up another couple trades at San Diego Comic-Con in 2013 — I read the Demon Knights one, but the rest have just sat on the shelf. Once removed from their cult-of-the-new urgency, the New 52 books have very little appeal versus reading more classic DC collections. Heck, I’ve spent more time in the past year with Sgt. Rock, Enemy Ace, Haunted Tank, Brubaker’s Catwoman, and Silver Age Legion of Superheroes than I have with any New 52 property. DC gets my nickel either way, so mission accomplished (I guess).

And the moral of the story is … I have no idea! Aside from the Longbox Graveyard Glass House Theory — that a guy with a podcast and a comics blog has no business throwing stones at ANYONE — I take little wisdom away from the New 52 launch aside from the sharpened realization that we are living in an era of Geek Plenty, and that I am perfectly happy living in 1978 (with occasional forays into the bracketing decades). I worry for the future of superhero comics because I don’t think present tactics are sustainable, but I don’t have a dog in the fight, and my level of worry is on the abstract plane along with deep concern over the Dodgers bullpen, or worrying that the Netflix Marvel TV shows will be more like SHIELD than Avengers.

You know, nerd stuff! Happy problems to have.

Thanks for posting!

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