Honest question, why is DC so edgy...

Maybe this is just because I stated with comics in the 90s but
1. they don't seem that edgy nowdays
2. what is wrong with comics being a bit edgy?

It is better then what marvel is doing lately by a long shot.

Ohhh man, I'd forgotten all about that one.

Nobody thinks that, you sperg.

Is there some rule here that a new "why is X edgy" thread gets made every time there isn't one in the top row ?

Now this is a bat image used a long time ago by a troll to complain about how "problematic" DC was, but i think it fits.

Here's some fun Superman/boy shit that everyone's seen a million times.

The funny thing is they've literally been doing this non-stop since the 90s; going 'comics aren't for little kids anymore, we're SERIOUS and GROWN UP!'.

And so all the kids stopped reading and now comics are on life support.

The funny thing about the Superboy Prime massacre is that Infinite Crisis was all about bringing the "Silver Age" fun and values.

See the thread with Milo interviewing Chuck Dixon.

What an arousing collage.

You can thank Alan Moore for that.

I think he's referring to Black Canary's head being used as an amplifier for Frankenstein's Monster.

I… I don't think I can process how stupid what I'm seeing is at this moment.

I think you're confusing "dark" with "edgy".

That was also in the Free Comic Book Day #0 issue, meaning little kids who went to that with their parents would pick it up becausei t had batman beyond on the cover.

I was just thinking about that the previous night.

Now that's Humor.

Yeah, since it's her Vocal Cords that control the screams but these guys are fucking morons.

I don't even know what Future Ends was even about.

Oh, that's just fucking great.

The overall edginess of the 80s is all due to the Comic Code. Comics were never supposed to be pushed to being just for kids (though there should be comics for kids, and the big two could do better efforts for that). So as time went on and those boundaries were pushed more and more. So guys like Moore and such knew the feeling of that pressure on books, and if you censor an artist long enough, he's going to rebel in big ways. But Watchmen wasn't "edgy" everything had a purpose, and it was a shocking way of saying "this artform can be as adult as ANY other". It was a bold, artistic statement.

The problem was that it was also an unstoppable financial success. And when you combine execs eager to cash in and writers who don't really have the same goals as people like Moore, you get a lot of edgy stuff because that's what they thought sold Watchmen issues (and for short term, maybe they weren't entirely wrong). I think the edginess of 80s comics was something that NEEDED to happen though, it was transitional growing pains that comics needed to get through.

But now? Fuck, it's really just because events and 'shaking things up' sells a few books. But in the long run it means none of the stories matter, none of your connections to characters will last, and there is no way for anyone to be a longterm fan of big two books anymore. Because if every event has a sacrifice characters or change things up to seem important, the entire consistency of every character you care about will be overturned ever few years. I suspect fan turnover rates are at an all time high, but I don't think there is a way to reliably study that.

I just think that DC is rather perverse.

Marvel when they wanted to shock the readers they'd kill someone important or bring back a dead character, but these would be later retconned or ignored. Nowadays they just replace an older character for a minority or do inter-racial couples.

DC? I feel somehow that DC is filled with channers. People like John Byrne, who was a huge creepy pedo. Their idea of shocking readers is doing something really, really fucking nasty that just leave you baffled wondering why or how the fuck someone approved it. Take the whole Batman fucking Batgirl thing. It's not your typical inter-racial couple thing, is something that have some really uncomfortable implications about the characters and how they interact, and you just know that the fucker who did this have fapped to the idea several times prior to doing it.

I remember that Mark Millar once joked in one of those writers and editors retreat about doing a big cross-over event centered on Wonder Woman designed to "break" and change the character, pretty much like what happened with Superman in "Death and Return of Superman", Batman with "Knightfall" and Green Lantern with "Emerald Dawn". His joke was that they should do the "Rape of Wonder Woman", where Wonder Woman is cornered by a bunch of villains and just brutally raped for several pages. This would change her in such a way that she world start despising men and become much more violent.

He just joked about this, but weeks later he got a call from a editor asking him to look some of the pages that were already done for the cross-over event.

That's pretty close to John Byrne and his run on Wonder Woman. Byrne does love his torture porn.

Byrne is a HEBEPHILE, he likes TEENS. It's different…

I actually like to imagine that's why he left X-Men when he did. Claremont wanted nothing but mindbreak, and Byrne wanted nothing but teens, and they just couldn't reconcile their fetishes. But that's probably not the reason. But has Byrne even done anything for DC lately?

It's weird for fans, who care as much as we do about the characters, to think about them as all some who work on the books see them as: a tool to make some fucking money. Not enough of them respect that they are curators for an important part of our culture, they just see it as getting sale numbers.

John Byrne is too fucking autistic to work with DC again. He always want to have HIS canon and will fight everybody about any deviation done to the characters.

For example Byrne fought constantly with Neil Gaiman about Etrigan, The Demon.

(Satanic trips)

No matter how many times I hear the story; It's cracks me up.

Like DC was really close to the idea and was talked out of it because it would seem inappropriate.
Anyone has the link to the Wiki thing, where they talked about it?

I always assumed it was because Claremont is into fem-dom and Byrne is into male-dom.

True dat. Remember Byrne erasing Morrison's run of Doom Patrol? And erasing Gerber's run on She-Hulk?

Well, those are two entirely opposing world views, they can't work together for very long.

Not defending Bryne but if given the chance I would fight with Gaiman.

I would see how many times I can get him to throw up

DC seems to be such a weird place, editorially speaking. It cracks me up that pretty much all interior art has to be later corrected by editors and inkers because their pencilers likes to sneak dongs. The whole thing just a big penis conspiracy.

dat dick

Didn't they get a "counter reset" on that smug SJW site because some upper manager just came out and said their target audience was 45?
Though to judge by the writing, their target audience is actually 15, the 15 year olds of 1999 who have just discovered Slipknot. Meanwhile Marvel's target audience is the 15 year olds of 2015.
Shame all the readers are 45.

I can't say if you are baiting or just plain retarded

how the why the fuck did you even the fuck reply ???

Does anyone have that old strip by Evan Dorkin where he addresses edginess in comics?
You know, "HOLY SHIT! VULPINA HAS SPACE AIDS! AND I'M GAY!".

...

aww are the metal men dead? Havent been following dc in a while.

To be fair, The Titans for some strange reason has a high mortality rate than the rest of the teams.

Not like it matters anyhow; The metal men always dies and get rebuilt.

What's funny about the Comics Code clamping down is that DC is the one who did it. Both DC and Archie conspired to use the code to kill their competition, namely the horror, romance, crime, and war comics, which were taking more and more of the market share after WW2. In one swoop, DC artificially extended the era of superheroes and creatively crippled comics for decades.

However, what I really think caused DC to go all grim-dark was Marvel appearing on the scene and the Batman television series back in the sixties. Marvel joked that DC was kid's stuff and Batman parodied the dark knight, both of which made teenage DC fans mad. Those fans grew up to get jobs at DC. They'd carry that resentment with them and were more than happy to show everyone that DC weren't for kids. And it keeps escalating.

The mentality of DC is really, really fucked up.

...

...

Batman went back to be grimdark quite soon after the tv series had ended, actually. Basically around the time when Denny O'neil and Neal Adams started working on it. They removed the campy bullshit from the comics and had Batman finding out who shot a politician, for instance.

TDKR wasn't born out of thin air.

They weren't quite "grimdark", but simply darker, closer to its pulp roots.

Is that bitch in the top right getting raped?

...

Yup. She was a character people enjoyed a lot from a happier time for most DC books, and the first issue of Identity Crisis really used every cheap trick in the book to make sure you liked cared that she was murdered in that same issue. Then they flashback in issue two to her brutal rape, which sets off a few more deaths while also being a complete red herring. The killer turned out to be someone who you had to have read the real old books to realize was mentally unbalanced, it wasn't anything actually in the story itself you could figure out, so it was all sort of shit as far as mysteries go.

So, in short, somewhat beloved character to hardcore fans, but not one the company was going to bother to use as a happily married woman. So they murdered her and retconned in that she was raped, to provide the conflict for an event. Fun times.

The horror.

...

Don't forget to mention that it caused Elongated Man's life to go in a downward spiral having to deal with the fallout and getting shit on for the rest of his life. Depression, wife's grave being desecrated, encountering a burning effigy of his wife and having it talk to him, a mental break down, him trying and failing to resurrect his wife multiple times, more depression, death, resurrection during "Blackest Night", and death again. It was just shit to be him during and after Identity Crisis.

This is why I won't defend DC against the SJWs. It would be like defending EA. They don't deserve it.

Identity Crisis had better character voices for all the characters it featured than 95 percent of the other comics those characters are featured in.
The plot might have been bad, but damn if Meltzer can't get into character's heads.

Y'know the best way to express my feeling on this shit is to imagine myself as Mister Miracle during those two issues where John Bryne was taking a piss on Jack Kirby. Just look at his face in that second to last panel. Looking at him feels like second hand cucking. Fuck this shit.

It really made every used of Dr. Light in Teen Titans REALLY FUCKING WEIRD. And yeah, I forgot the extra cheap emotional trick of "she was also pregnant" when she was killed. So two characters that, to my understanding were just a happy married couple that hadn't been used much in years, to have all that shit tossed onto them, including a retcon, is just sort of a lesson to never get attached to anyone in comics. Because the next event that needs emotional weight will draw the next set of random victims.

What kinda being comes to a man's house, and casually shows him a video of that man being cucked? Darkseid.

It's like DC tried to pull a Watchmen with their own characters without realizing the damage it would do.

So when the Comics Code killed diversity in American comics (genre diversity, not racial), the Big Two tried to fill in that vacuum by making their characters (most of whom were never meant to be geared towards adults), which led to some mixed results?

Well, shit. Is there a chance that American comics will ever recover and diversify towards different audiences, as is the case in in Europe or Japan?

Maybe someday. And I'd argue that the comics code probably DID slow racial diversity in comics to a small degree. I recall one story about a comic getting resistance because at the end the astronaut (who was helmeted until the last panel) turned out to be a black man. While this was probably one guy getting trying to get in the way of the book because he was personally racist, the fact that the code constantly loomed over every book was the type of censorship that people would easily use to push their own agendas. And the overall air of censorship probably held a lot of comic creation back in the 50s and 60s, regardless of race.

I think we can recover though, and it requires more of us creating. A lot of us being lifetime fans of the medium, a higher percentage of us are qualified to know what makes a comic work than most other people would. Which is why I made /comic/, if I may cheaply plug it

It's a bit more complicated than that. I'm certain DC figured they were going to take over those genres once their rivals had been starved out of business (hence why DC is the most content diverse of the mainstream publishers), but the many, many comic book crashes that followed foiled that plan.

It's a great story.

That altercation led Gaines to abandon comics and focus on Mad Magazine.

But no, I don't believe Western comics can recover until they can become a profitable enterprise once more. It's too niche right now to survive.

Diversity in Japanese comics might be trickier though, because we learn about those out of their natural context. The japanese comics market is strongly separated in sections for race and gender, and while some stuff is tolerated, it's clear that a certain kind of person will buy certain kind of stuff. You can say there's material for EVERYONE, and I do mean it after skimming through a few compilation magazines a friend of mine showed me, but it's clear japanese comics still have a public, so to speak. I guess only diehard fans would buy the real books, the equivalent of the TPB. Other than that, we mostly know stuff for kids and teens, which might distort our perception of their production and the intent of said books.

What is true is that the japanese craze almost killed the Metal Hurlant tradition in Europe, which is something you can see in the absolutely dreadful drop in quality seen in the Heavy Metal magazine during the 90s. Only the really good ones survived, but it's still true that they managed to survive the japanese invasion better than the american comics. Even those who took influence from japanese comics still retain a strong european style to them. I like Enrico Marini a lot.

They're still obsessed with the idea of getting on the news and everyone keeps mindlessly repeating the "if it makes readers angry they will talk about it and buy more comics" mantra over and over in their heads.

Nah. DC doesn't do press shit like Marvel.

Actually, DC sucks at press. It's one of the reasons Marvel is so successful because they know how to string the readers and casuals alike with any controversy.

DC just… i don't know. They let the writers put their creepy fetish and fantasies on page way too much.

This has to be an edit…

it's a damn good one if it is

Oop wait no its real, apparently it's made by some guy named Ed benes.

You sure user?

That was a rhetorical question by the way here's the real panels.

You obviously haven't spent much time at rule #34 .com.
It's full of bad photoshops of bad 90's superhero comics, with derpy nipples pointing any which way they want, by assholes who obviously A. have never seen a naked woman in their life, or B. are using the mouse left-handed.

DC is edgy because it has to be edgy. The whole universe and therefore their editorial policies are poisoned from the beginning.

Look, narratively you can't have any real conflict in DC unless you go to edgy territory. Because the characters are designed to be flawless and perfect heros from the cradle. Superman is superman because of his parents. Wonder Woman is Wonder Woman because of her birth place. Batman is batman because his parents died. Green lantern is a lantern because he simply is the bravest. Narratively you can't do jack shit with it. So you throw edgy stuff to it.
Compare it to Marvel. All of it's heros are the product of their own decisions, fails and vices. They are architects of their own fate from day one. Except Thor. But that's why Thor is a piece of shit

I beg to differ. Your defeatism disgusts me.

Batman is the only exception, granted. Because he's relatable.

The rest of the lot is beyond salvation. Look at superman. They keep throwing creative teams at it and nothing of value comes out. They even got Nolan on board and he was able to give a piece of shit in return. Even Paul dine and Bruce timm were unable to produce something memorable. Alan Moore said it. Grant Morrison said it. Howard chaykin said it. The DCEU is the main proof of this.

Outside of batman, DC is narrative shit.

What about aquaman?

Seriously… Batman is the ONLY thing the company has going for them? I'm going to need a moment to process how stupid that sounds.

You are so fucking retarded I'm having difficulty putting it into words.

Excuse me?

See this conflict here, faggot? One story arc seemingly ending here, and you have plots through Justice League and Justice League Unlimited. You have Superman's character being challenged and developed throughout that team. You have one of the best remembered cartoons in the business, and the yardstick which BvS falls short of.

Did you forget?

Oh yeah, and speaking of that…

THAT IS FUCKING IT

I AM GOING TO TORRENT SUPERMAN VS THE ELITE RIGHT NOW

I'M TIRED OF THAT UNSPEAKABLE AUTIST AND HIS RUINED VIDEO GETTING LITERALLY MILLIONS OF VIEWS BECAUSE HE HAS THE ONLY QUALITY VERSION OF THAT VIDEO

Good on you, m8. Make sure to include the fight before and the end of the ruse cruise after.

Seriously… This is just what I'm talking about. A) Vertigo is the best thing that has come out of DC, mainly because it doesn't seem to be DC and B)The swamp thing is not a relatable character. Or else there would be a lot of great story arcs coming out with this guy as protagonist. This saga was great because of Alan Moore. It's not the character, it's the writer. Alan Moore in his prime (and even later) could find gold on the shittiest shit.

The same with Starman. That was a legendary run. But it was about the writer. Not the character. Starman was so painfully out of the general tone of the DC universe they had to erase him almost completely. And replace him with pic related.

Yep. DC has had a couple of good ideas here and there. But even a broken clock is right twice a day.

All star superman is great. In fact, that's the best Grant Morrison… It would follow that GM+superman=Sure greatness. But nope. See pic related 2.

As I said, the DC universe is poisoned from the get go. In the beginning DC wanted to do soft pulp for teenagers and kids. On the other hand, Stan Lee wanted to be the best american novelist and injected that gravitas to Marvel. Kirby wanted to elevate the comic strip to an art form. Marvel was born out of this creative wedding… And then people accuse Marvel of bribing film critics. The truth is -willingly or unwillingly- marvel laid out the right foundations from the start. DC didn't.

I sort of understand the pain and grief of learning that DC is a sinking ship. I realized this 5 years ago. And Warner is accelerating the sinking in. I'm not trying to be contentious or anything, but it speaks volumes that DC can't churn out a decent superman history in 10 years (all star came out in 2005) and they can't make a decent film off of their properties. Seriously, people…

Let me ask you something: what are the critical acclaimed Marvel books?

Because DC has an enormous catalog of books starring their characters and most of the books are genre-defining and critical acclaimed stories.

I can easily say… The Flash, and list a number of books that everybody knows.

Can we do this as well for most Marvel characters?

Infinity Gauntlet?

Not the quoted, but what marvel have is great runs, instead of the closed stories that are more common in DC.

The most obvious would be Kirby and Lee run in the Fantastic Four and Ditko/Lee Spider-man, which are the genre-defining and critically acclaimed stories that you want.

And, I can't recall a genre-defining story from The Flash. I mean, the character has some great stories, but nothing so defining as the first years of Spider-man.

Robots taking over the world.

No. Seriously

You're moving the goalposts, user. All I'm seeing is a good array of characters and tools who can be turned to quality work in good hands.

What's more, you've decided to ignore the DCAU and its own stories.

Also, Stargirl and company were separate heroes from the Starmen. They were around while Starman was ongoing, unless I'm mistaken.

The Zoom saga, perhaps? Flash was one of those heroes to get a lot of mileage out of the legacy concept, same with Batman, Green Lantern, and Starman.

Flashpoint became well enough known that people who didn't even pay attention to comics knew about it.

Why is it that DC has much better animated movies and shows than Marvel? Marvel makes better Hollywood movies, but they can't seem to get their animated movies or shows down.
Also Marvels idea of comics is to replace all of their characters with (current year) characters.

I agree with this. The well is poisoned with DC characters.

why was superman bleeding? I thought the british guys powers didn't work on him
Also, superman is a mary sue.

Sure. DC has acclaimed books. DC should be in the business of acclaimed books. Not decent serialized entertainment. The DCEU has adapted the TDKR twice!! But at the same time, batman in the comics is… what? Edgy central? Gore inc.? I don't even know what Snyder (the shitty writer, not the shitty director) is doing with him anymore.

Like what? Flashpoint? C'mon…

You know you can polish a turd and make it shine, right? Alan Moore was able to make a very decent run on Rob Liefeld's Youngblood. Would you call Youngblood a good array of characters?

Fine. DC has good characters. So tell me: Why haven't they been able to make a single memorable story for superman (DC flagship, nonetheless) in more than a decade? Why haven't they been able to shit out a decent superman movie? Hmm? Why?

That's not how that expression goes

I just told you: because the hands and/or mandates Didio and cronies assign to them aren't competent these days.

See this bald fucker? See him? That's fucking why.

They aren't competent since post crisis. Tell me Hour zero was competent… Or the new 52.

Go polish a turd.

You guys are forgetting that that bald fucker is just one half of DC's head. The other is Jim Lee.
Jim Lee went from making the top selling book ever (on a Marvel title) to founding the most successful (at least in that time) indie comic publisher.
Surely Jim Lee would be the best guy to take on DC. But somehow he has only made it worse. Could it be that Jim has lost touch? Or could it be that DC is a narrative dead end?

Which one again?

Whazzat? Do you mean Zero Hour?

…I included that under "these days." Everything after Flashpoint.

Happened with George Lucas, could've happened to him too. What kind of writing does he favor?

To say that the DC Rebirth hasn't been competent and true to the characters (so far) would be an insult.

It's actually turned out quite well

DC ruled in the 90's, man. Don't go there. DC owned that shit. Sooo many good books. That's not even mentioning Vertigo.

Dan Didio might also be bad and stupid, but the dude also created a lot of neat books and kept a lot of good books that didn't sell so good alive for a good time.

Jonah Hex had 70+ more issues. Never sold much because that's not what the market wanted, but this comic? Fucking stellar, man. Pure western goodie. Didio kept this book alive just for the sake of it.

I blame Didio for a lot of shit, but give the man where it's due.

Hmm? So things have picked up since Nu52?

Well that's nice if it's so. I haven't been paying much attention to the comics lately thanks to Didio's pride and joy.

DC seems to have learned from most of their mistakes with Nu52.

They kicked most of the SJW content, though a bit of it remains (though I feel it'll be ending soon, based on how the comics are going) such as Batgirl.

do you mean their event titles? I think that could also be applied to marvel as well but essentially they just try to shake things up for controversy to boost sales. The problem with this is while it may boost short term sales it hurts long term sales by alienating long term fans with this bullshit. Despite the popularity with superheroes now days superhero comics have existed because of the hardcore fans, not the casuals. Once you pissed off the hardcore fans to the point they refuse to buy you fucked yourself up.

Traditionally the Big Two are about ten years behind the times, like the Teen Titans hot rod drag racing stories in the 60's, and Marvel doing Disco Dazzler and kung fu comics in the 80's.
The cringe is nothing new, it's just a novelty to be cringing at something we're still cringing at IRL.

How're they messing with Babs these days?

Go read the latest Batgirl and you tell me.

Her costume is garbage, and her character is nothing like her Oracle persona. She's a much weaker character, despite getting out of the chair.
The only thing they can do to save her is have Dick give her the Dick until she gets over the feminism.

does she still wear that purple home made hit girl costume?

Yes.

At least DC has Batgirl admitting she's a fucking hipster. It'd be worse if they played her off as a real hipster, and pretend that everyone else is pretentious.

She has two ongoings now. One where she's backpacking across Europe, and the other where she's leading the Birds of Prey

Of course.

Backpacking across Asia*

Call it what it is: sex tourism.

Pretty much, and they're failing completely at it because teenagers have literally everyone else aimed at them.

I think it may well be cartoons and anime that devoured the comic book audience, manga merely came after.

Well, if she's on a sex tour, why the fuck is she going through asia?

for the ladyboys.

The same ladyboys whose dicks don't work? I mean, I've been to Thailand, and they tried to reassure us that their dicks didn't work anymore.

yes those ladyboys.

Just making sure we're talking about the same ladyboys

Actually, I'm pretty sure they're lower than ever.

Kids and teens DON'T READ COMICS. They are only vaguely aware they exist, and they may go in a comic shop one day, and if they're not turned off by it being a weird smelling nerd dungeon, they're bewildered by a zillion overpriced pamphlet comics, buy one Batman and wonder what the fuck is going on, and never return.

Comics are in a model trains death spiral, though with more self-awareness; they are CONSTANTLY trying new stunts and gimmicks to try and get the kids interested with all the relevance of Archie having Reggie wear meme shirts or become a DJ, but the only people reliably buying are the dwindling pool of rusted-on 45 year olds.

You want turnover; it means new people are buying your stuff, and you can recycle the same scripts next year because none of the kids who read it the first time around are still reading, right? That's how it worked in the Silver Age. But diehards demand consistency (at least in theory. Archie doesn't bother with continuity at all and they keep their diehards) but also something new to keep their interest; so you end up with the worst of all worlds with constant events, crossovers, retcons and shocking twists that make comics both impossible to follow and barely worth doing so.

just curious how was it fucking ladyboys? Was it pleasant?

There are plenty of people under 30 reading comics. The problem though, is that they aren't buying them. They're just getting the trade.

What the big 2 really need to do is put in instructions in all of their trades on how to sign up for a mailing list. They should advertise on tv for this too. Kids these days don't have money to spend on a shitton of books, so what they need to do is package them conveniently.

For instance, you could get for $25 a month:

This would contain all of the Batfamily-related books. You'd get Batman, Detective, Nightwing, Batgirl, Red Hood and the Outlaws, etc.

or say

With this you'd get the main JLA book, as well as copies of the ongoing for every member of the team, plus Action Comics and Detective.

And then for the people who want EVERYTHING, just scale the price way up and have "DC Complete", which contains all of their current publications.

Now, you might be saying: But user, kids can't spend $25 a month for comics! I will counter that statement by asking you: How many teenagers subscribe to LootCrate? A fuckton, that's how many. If you were to even throw in a couple cheap collectibles you could clean up.

And as for comic book stores, just offer the packages there, but throw in some kind of exclusive collectible or have the issues be special edition or something, so all of their business doesn't dry up.

And make sure to keep selling single issues as well.

So, essentially,
Marvel = SJW
DC = redpill
?

The funny thing is that DC already does this with their partnership with Funko, minus the comics.

legionofcollectors.com/