New 52, Marvel NOW and the Treatment of Creators
Hello, fellow muties. It’s been a little while, but I am returned, once again, to bring you a guest article here at the beloved home of the Trash Mutant. Last time I was here, I talked about the different Marvel NOW titles and which ones looked good to me. Now I am going to compare Marvel NOW to its spiritual companion, DC’s New 52 reboot that began in September of 2011. Since Marvel NOW only began within the last month, and DC’s New 52 has been going on for a year and a few odd months, naturally we know more about the New 52, since there is more of it. It’s entirely possible that one year from now, you might look at this article and laugh out loud because I said something about Marvel NOW that may not hold true a year from now. It might not be entirely fair that I’m comparing Marvel NOW, which has only had a month or so to mess up, with DC’s New 52, which has had 15 months to mess up. But I’m not here to be fair, so on with the comparison piece.
One thing that many people are saying is that the key
difference between these two big things (aside from Marvel NOW just renumbering
the titles and creating a few new titles, while New 52 is much closer to a full
on reboot, even if it doesn’t quite reach that) is that DC Comics and editorial
are more concerned with the characters and what they are doing with the
characters. Everything I’ve seen about Marvel NOW seems to indicate that
the people behind this big thing at Marvel are more concerned with letting
their creators tell the story they want to tell, with as little interference
from on high as possible.
I remember when the New 52 was just getting started, I read somewhere that one of the editors at DC was saying that you aren’t going to see delays in shipping, and I really got the feeling that he was taking a stand on that. And sure, some comic book fans have a tendency to complain when a book doesn’t ship on time. These complaints are sometimes valid, especially if every single title under a company is connected under some kind of story, and if a single title is 2 or 3 months late or even a week late, that delay in shipping can sometimes spoil the reading experience of other comics which are, in theory, supposed to be part of this grand story that is supposed to be read in a certain way. So yeah, maybe this editor, who seems to think that keeping comics from being delayed, maybe he thinks that is something comic book readers REALLY care about. And like I said, it is something people will complain about. Always. But at what point should we, and editorial, look at a book and say “it’s ok if that book is a month late or a week late, because the creators are bringing us the best stories they can bring, and anything we do to try to make it ship on time will be getting in the way of that”? Let me point to some concrete examples, shall I? I said that DC seems to be acting in a way where they care more about the comic books they are creating (also known as, the money they are making from those comics) and the FICTIONAL characters in those comics than they do about the human beings creating these stories. As of now, I have seen complaints from creators like George Perez, Scott McDaniel, John Rozum, Rob Liefeld, and while I haven’t yet seen any word from her, as of this writing, Gail Simone was notified just a couple of days ago that she was no longer writing Batgirl, via an EMAIL. All of these creators have, in some way, been treated poorly by “the Man” if we are to take them at their word. Maybe we should not include Rob Liefeld in this list, but sometime after he was calling his retirement from DC “amicable” and sometime before he seemingly went insane and starting yelling at the world on twitter, he was complaining about how DC was micromanaging his every decision on the books he was creating. And this is the guy who, to me, it seemed like DC was going out of their way to keep him with them. Hawk and Dove does poorly, so they give him 3 other titles to work on. If they treat someone who they like and want to be part of the team like this, then can you imagine how they might treat the people they DON’T like? 
If you don’t like to take Rob Liefeld at his word, then listen to George Perez. Perez lasted all of six issues on Superman. According to Perez, he would run a story idea by one of the higher ups, he would be okayed to run that story, and then a week later, he would be told that he would have to change the story. Sometimes, it got so bad that he had already finished a script, and was then being told that he’d have to rewrite it because of something they decided they wanted to do after giving the go-ahead on his script. Not only does this sound like a terrible atmosphere to work in, but it also can’t be good for ANYONE involved. John Rozum said that because of the way he was treated on Static Shock, and consequently, because of that book’s hindenburg-esque failure, fans were saying they would never buy anything he wrote again. Heck, COMPANIES were saying they wouldn’t hire him, based on the faulty product that had his name on it for 4 issues. Now imagine this across the board. If Editorial fails to communicate with their creators (so we’re all on the same page, the people who make them the comics, and thus, make them the money they like), and even tries to insert themselves into the creative process, then this easily hurts the career options of these creators when they want to move on to better job options. If people like Rozum and Perez both speak out against this company for the way they are treating the creators like they are less important than the janitor, then that also, in turn, can’t be good for the company, can it? The more DC persists in treating employees like garbage, it seems to me that this will only cause fans to think twice before buying from DC (not all fans, mind you. Some people don’t care about the ethics behind a piece of entertainment as long as the entertainment itself is solid. And fair enough.) and it will certainly give creators cause to pause before saying “yeah, I’d like to write Swamp Thing.” This article is turning out to be more negative than I wanted, so let’s talk about Marvel NOW, shall we? As I said, Marvel NOW hasn’t been around as long as DC’s New 52, but what I can tell you immediately about it, without knowing anything about how they are operating behind the scenes, is that it certainly seems like Marvel is marketing the CREATORS more than the characters. “Hey, come look at what Mark Waid is doing on the Hulk. Look at what Rick Remender is doing on Captain America. Look at what Brian Michael Bendis is doing on X-Men.” At DC, you’re more likely to see something that mentions the name of the creators, but they seem to act like the creators are not the reason you are coming to read the book. And before I go further, I know that different people read different comics for different reasons. Some people will read a very bad comic book from a very bad creator, because it’s a character they like. Some people will follow creators, and once the creator they like is off a book, then so are they. And some people are more about the premise that a series is using. If Captain America as a modern espionage comic doesn’t tickle your fancy, maybe a sci-fi horror adventure romp will. And what Marvel NOW seems to be doing is really hitting in the right spot the exact mix of premise and creator that, to me anyway, seems very interesting. But then again, premise and creators on certain books made me initially interested in books from the New 52 side of things, and now that we’ve had some time to experience some of those titles, I’m understandably less interested. Now, as I said at the beginning of the article, we still don’t know very much about Marvel NOW. Three months into DC’s New 52, I’m not sure if there were any complaints about how DC was treating creators. So once again, a year from now, if we’re seeing lots of news of Marvel treating their writers like they are expendable and replacable, then I guess we can all look back at this and have a good laugh. But until then, I would love to hear your thoughts on this comparison (which really ended up being more of a rant, I guess) and what you think of each of these sides of the reboot/renumbering. ReuBen DeBord has written a few things on the internet. On the wunderkind of a website, the Essential Webcomics Showcase, he has written a few pieces you may have heard of, such as "50 Reasons why I hate Smallville", and his ongoing series called “If It’s Broken, they won’t fix it.” If you don’t feel like waiting 5 months for him to put something on that website, then you can go to his Youtube page, where he tries to put up content a couple of times a week, and has even managed to squeeze out content once a day, for a while there. This is where you can see him review movies, comics and things that are just kinda related to this corner of pop culture.
Outside of his writing, there are rumors that ReuBen is a surviving clone of some kind. Either from the Clone Wars, or an unknown from Peter Parker’s past. Either way, he’s pretty crazy. It’s a good thing he focuses 95 percent of his energy in writing stuff for the internet. 
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