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Let's get on with the show now. Hello everybody and welcome to the Elseful Exchange. I'm Sal. I'm the Beardless Cape Joel.
Yes, let's address the Joel in the room. Joel has no beard right now, everybody. No, I bet my beard in lost. And you know, one of those competitions you hear about.
That's right. I bet my beard you're wrong. And I turned out of a bitch. No, no, I started tapering it was the thing.
It was getting too long. I was going to have to start braiding it soon. And then I got too over. I thought there was no weekly pull this week.
And there was no the pull this week. Oh, cool. I can all grow back by then. But then I was like, hey, don't forget our Wednesday show.
I'm like, all right. On camera, live. Oh, no. The war did by the Elseworld Exchange.
Oh yeah, sorry about that. But we're here. Let's do it. So today's topic is going to be a little bit heavy.
Actually, because Tiff, Ben and I chatted the other day about a deeper topic as well, we talked about what was it? Legacy Heroes versus new characters. Thank you. I watched that video.
I enjoyed it. I was talking about that. And this was one of the on my list of things I wanted to talk about and get into. Because I thought like, we don't address as many heady topics as we should.
You know, we know it's usually kind of fun and easy going on this show. Let's talk about action figures. Exactly. Well, as it was action figures.
So let's try and let's try and bring it down a little bit. Talk a little bit about, you know, because I heard this the other day, somebody mentioned the DC was just straight up more consumer friendly than Marvel. And so I wanted to say I want to address that. And so before we get into like the numbers and shit, I wanted to say Joel is DC more consumer friendly than Marvel is Marvel losing their consumer ability?
Well, you know, the important thing to keep in mind about any topic like this is that the comic industry in the big two DC and Marvel. It's always up and down and rarely do you find a situation where both Marvel and DC are up at the same time. Like, you know, you fast forward just a while ago to the DC era to the new 52 era and it was completely flip-flop. We were making jokes about DC.
DC was down in the crapper and Marvel was riding high and everything. And now a couple years later, total reversal of fortune. Well, listen to me say that's the consensus that's the vibe that's the overall tone that everybody seems to be talking to, which is DC is crushing Marvel. DC is killing Marvel.
Marvel is slave to DC. You know, Marvel can't seem to get their shit together. What was running that damn place? That seems to be the vibe.
Or at least that's where the loudest voices in the fan community are saying. And the question is, is it true? And you know, it's funny. I personally, from my perspective, not necessarily from an opinion perspective or even from a sales perspective, just from me and what I buy or what I choose to buy first.
I am technically buying more Marvel books than DC books. Do you find that's the case with you as well? I was always 50-50 was the thing. I remember even back when I worked for the other guys back when I worked for the comic cast.
My original thing, my thing that got me in the door was I was the DC guy. I was the guy who read more DC than Marvel. That was my niche. And then as time went on, I started incorporating more Marvel books until I was about 50-50.
I would say as it stands right now for reviews on my channel and for videos, and surely people can see this, I definitely review more DC books than Marvel, but that's really more of a number thing. When it comes to shit that I just read on my own, it's about 50-50 because I'll read stuff that doesn't get put up on the channel like Hulk right there. Like that book is digging that. But I know it probably won't get many numbers or at least won't get as many views as an equally sized DC book.
So I make a little trade off. I foresee some cancellation in Hulk's future. Especially after issue 6, I just read it. I hated it.
And I forgot it came out this week after I knew it. I thoroughly disappointed. It was like, this is a slow burn. It's going someplace.
First arc wrapped. I'm like, get the fuck out of here. Really? See that hurts me because right now it was kind of jockeying for a position on my best of the year.
It's like if we can stick this landing because it's so subdued and so subtle and so cool. But now you break my heart. Sorry, I don't mean to do that. I want you to have a pure reading experience.
I'm so disappointed and no one's reading Hulk. So it's hard to find anybody who cares about what's happening in that book. I know, right? Well, to tell you what, I'll read it this week and then I'll come back with my thoughts.
Right, right? But yeah, I mean, okay. So from a YouTuber perspective, we just talked about ourselves. We do technically buy more DC books than Marvel.
But that's a very small sample size too. I would have a potential 200,000 or more. But that being said, as a YouTuber from our perspective, I can tell you some little bit inside as well. I think the DC videos do better right now.
I would say so. Well, even if anything, just to contrast and compare, what is it? We had the button and we had Secret Empire going head to head for a little bit there. Button coverage did way better than Secret Empire coverage.
And I know because I put them both basically back to back same day, same time slot. Oh, and I think it was about a 2K difference for the button. Yeah, I thought, yeah, let me tell you something. I thought that it would be a smart move to just go back and forth, take the secret and fire.
It's perfect. We can really slip down the middle and show both of the big two their fair do. Secret Empire doesn't hold a candle to the button, which at the end of the day was just like, hey, let's watch Batman Flash do something real quick. Like, Secret Empire is an epic, Marvel status quo, changing blah, blah, blah, the world and they're gonna be the same again, and let me tell you something.
Let me fold in. Again, if we're baking a cake, I'm gonna fold in a little bit of numbers for you. Marvel's numbers have not been nearly as good. They hit a significant dip right after Secret Wars ended.
And they've never quite recovered. And I don't mean to say, by the way, that does not mean Marvel hasn't recovered. Marvel is in the shitter. Marvel is doing poorly.
I'm saying that Marvel did not recover from the Secret Wars event. And who knows why that is? It could be because people were expecting a reboot. It could be because by the time Secret Wars is over, people were fatigued and done.
It could be that Secret Wars was a really good tapping out point. Like that was a nice story. I think I'm done now. Right.
What a good time to stop. I don't know. But the fact- Everything lives. Okay.
Right. Thanks, Reed. Enjoy not being in a book for a long time. But yeah, so for that, Marvel is a core, like superficially, they took a hit after Secret Wars.
And I think that like, after Secret Wars, they might want to, they might have wanted to reconsider the whole event thing. Or going only on events, even though it seems to be that events are the way to make money. As it turns out, what we discussed before is that like, event comics do result in a bump in sales. But the bump goes, you know, a bump is this.
It's not a frickin' right angle that just never stops going towards the sun. It's not sustainable. And I know like the whole idea of tie-ins for your event is hopefully to get some eyes on a book that maybe people aren't reading that they might enjoy. But you know, that's a rarity that it happens when it happens.
You might get a couple people to stick around and read a book. It's like, oh, I really enjoyed that. I think I want to see where this is going from here. Sure.
But even then, oh yeah, go ahead. I'm just going to say, you're also pissing off your core readers by changing streams or changing like, or as midstream and being like, let's do this. Yeah. And then I'm like, I'm going to be like, look, do I tie-in completely to this event?
Do you know, try and, you know, reel in those people who aren't reading it? Or do I kind of try and stay the course and tell the story I'm telling? Of course, I'm a big fan of Jimmy Palmieri. And I always love reading his event, Ty, because you can tell he really doesn't care about it.
He's like, look, I will pay lip service to your event. I will have a thing happen. But at the end of the day, I'm telling my story. Yeah, exactly.
If it naturally flows in, I will do it. But if you ever read his tie-in for like, Night of the Hours, which was Jonah Hacks, which was already kind of weird because it's like he's fighting a thousand or hundreds of years removed version of a talent from the Court of Hours. It's great because Jonah's just walking around having an adventure. Oh, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb.
Man, got to deal with these guys with the crime bible and everything. Oh, no, a talent. Better shoot a man. That was sure a hairy time to continue with this story.
Yeah. So I can imagine how that would not necessarily contribute to the sales of Jonah Hex books. Not really. But then again, I think Palmieri is a guy who knows his audience, knows his numbers, and knows to get in and out.
Yeah, that's right. That's right. So I was looking at just talking a little bit about numbers. I was looking back at 2012 when Marvel just started Marvel Now and DC was eight months deep, I think, in DC, I knew 52.
I remember this there. It's when it really started taking off for me as a comic book YouTuber. Right. So number one, the first thing that I noticed was there were books breaking 200,000.
That book unfortunately was Avengers vs. X-Men. Oh, no. And it was issue one.
Oh, no. So big deal event. It's funny because it used to be I was actually looking through some of numbers and I'm thinking to myself, like, man, I got to pick a time when there weren't any events going on. I have to go back before 2005.
Jesus. And I'm not going to do that because then that completely changes the dynamic. I'm thinking just about, you know, like when status quo's were starting to shift over. Like Marvel's just dovetailing out of their new status quo.
It's basically the end of Marvel Now 2.0 slash all new, all different Marvel and DC is a year deep in DC rebirth. Let's take a look at some comparable times. So with this, Avengers X-Men was in the top. It's zero issue was the second best selling issue in March of 2012.
But interestingly enough, the top 10 slot was occupied by both Batman, Superman, Avengers and Justice League. Like those are the world with a weird exception of Green Lantern number seven also sold in the high 90s or in the low 90s. What was going on with that issue? Why did that one blow up?
No, actually, Green Lantern number seven. Let me know what happened. Green Lantern number seven. Was it good?
Was it just was the buzz that freaking good about Green Lantern for some reason? But but it's interesting because you're thinking to yourself like, okay, like one thing to note is that Marvel and DC's placement in the top 10 top five slots haven't really changed in the last five years. No. Same books are occupying them.
The same publishers are occupying them. And while in an inverse place, I know that whenever I look at comics, allergies, top pulled books of that time, I noticed that DC is typically dominating the top five top 10. Right. When it comes to sales, I just pure sales, it's pretty much neck and neck.
Right. You know, like, like Marvel might be two thirds. DC might be two thirds. It really depends.
You know, but with March, it was pretty much hand in hand. Batman always of course sells the best. But like anyway, point being is that when it comes to just looking at the last five years back when you said like five years ago, AVX, you couldn't say they weren't really doing a lot of reliance. And X-Men, you couldn't say the X-Men were being marginalized.
Although you couldn't argue that X-Men was definitely pigeonholed and tight cast or at least forced into an event that they wouldn't really fit into. But you could say like, hey, Marvel's doing all right. You weren't, like people were kind of complaining that it wasn't really as bad as it seems to be today. There was interesting stuff going on.
There was some direction. There was an overabundance of time travel. Remember that for the original Marvel now it seemed like everything was time travel center? Yes, I do remember that.
That was weird, especially because they didn't really do anything interesting with it. Felt like they were building up to something, right? Like some sort of time war or some sort of like, oh no, you broke the space time continuum thing. It's funny.
I was just talking about that recently. A few people commented on an episode of Age Voltron when we were doing that on back issues. And they were just recently founded and talked about it how they were like, oh, the fallout in Age Voltron actually resulted in like Secret Wars. And I think that's not true.
I think it's more like Secret Wars was an idea that Hickman was working on. And it just so happened that time travel was the one thing they were all worried about in Age Voltron was them breaking the space time continuum. Right. It was not about like breaking time and having it result in incursions.
Incursions were separate from the time break. But yeah, they were working on time and it was like maybe I've got something on. Every story was time centric. The Axemen were messing with time.
Everyone was messing with time. It's true. And the only thing that really happened was Angela got shaken out of the tenth realm. Ah, yes.
That happened because the time travel nonsense. Is that how she came in? Because I wasn't reading Guardians at the time. The only real Angela thing I read was that whole, you know, Thor-Loki original sin.
Oh, hey, we're actually telling the story of who she is. Literally just the end of Age of Ultron, the double-page spread that Kasadadriel where she's like, if someone, like, whoever woke me up is gonna pay. Angela shows up like freaking what? Remember how excited we all were about the Angela thing because in the back of our minds we had hoped that that game and actually got like Miracle Man in the deal and she did the Harbinger of Miracle Man showing up in Marvel.
Didn't happen. Didn't happen. Nope. Didn't even Harbinger writing anything for Marvel.
No, that's weird. It's just one giant middle finger to Todd McFarland. Yeah. I mean, like, thanks.
I mean, it does resolve any issue that McFarland does have with Neil Gaiman. Like, they don't have to worry about publishing Angela or reprinting Angela or making Angela Actor Fingers. It's all out of his hands. But anyway, that being said, when it comes to sales, like, is Marvel hurting itself?
Is Marvel less consumer friendly than it used to be? I mean, judging just from a scheduling and monetary thing, DC books are cheaper now come out more frequently. Yeah, it's interesting because Marvel has a weird, the Marvel and DC have two very different philosophies when it comes to monthly books and the pricing of them. Marvel's like, the same books will come out by the same creative teams over the last 10 years and they're going to be $5.
And they're going to come out once a month. And DCs is, let's shake up the creative status quo. Let's release our primary books twice a month for $1 less per book. At the end of the day, you're spending, let's say, $5 an issue on a Spider-Man book for Marvel.
You're spending, what, $6, I'm sorry, yeah, six and change per month on a DC book, but you're getting like pretty much double the content. That's really the only change. Some other stuff that Chad just mentioned here that I thought was important. Super Mark says there, and of all the DC rebirth books we have right now, no cancellations yet.
Really? Nothing's been canceled? I don't think anything's been canceled. I think everything that's been even like Blue Beetle and everything is still going out.
I thought Blue Beetle was canceled, but that's messed up. I did. Way to go. I dropped off because it just wasn't the book I wanted to be.
And Joel, Kenna Koroko, he said something interesting there. He said, DC listens to their fans. Do they, they didn't for a good solid five years. They tried to force everything you didn't like down your throat and saying you will like it and you will love it.
And then they were at their darkest hour where they're like, hey, maybe old Superman should come back and maybe all the side kicks should come back and maybe all these other things you've been yelling at us about for five years should happen. Yeah, that's a good question. Does DC listen to their fans? I will say having actually had the opportunity to go to the DC rebirth panel.
I wonder, Con last year. You did being there and watching the back and forth the conversation. I mean, I'm also there too because it live streamed. But if you were there and you watched the whole thing, I did get a distinct impression that DC was at least trying to perpetuate the narrative that we listened to you.
It was a wonderful panel. Yeah. Everyone was a flawless, the executive panel, number two and a great art, number three, great creators there who were time honored and recognized and like great creators and they made the bad ones like Scott Liddell stay at home. And they brought out like Greg Rucka and Dan Abnett and stuff like that being like, look, you liked these guys.
You liked them when they worked on the books. You liked so it was a way and even what's the name? Even Dan Deo being the guy to say Dick Grayson's becoming Nightwing again and he's going to be blue. Yeah.
Like it was at least a way for them to say, hey, listen, even if they don't, even if behind the scenes, they don't get a shit about what we think. They definitely want you to believe that they hear what you have to say, which I think is more than I can say from Marvel where Marvel's like, here's what we're doing. And that's like the end of the conversation. And you're like, why are you doing this?
Why are we doing this? Why, why, why any of this? And Marvel's stonewalling them. Yeah.
At the very least, there seems to be a, like kind of like a culture of community fostering that DC has just recently started to adapt. I'm not saying that DC is better out of the Marvel, nor am I saying that DC is a better place or that they love their fans more. They're trying to meet people halfway though. At the very least, or they've at least figured out how to monetize what can be construed as community fostering.
The DC fan channel, which we've all done work with, is an excellent idea. It's a great idea. Is it a great execution though? Did it succeed?
I mean, it's a thing that exists and you know, it makes people feel closer to the company. I think you're right. I think it does. I certainly feel like we've got, we've got contact at DC.
That's like more than I can say from Marvel and any respect. That being said, I shouldn't necessarily skew it because we have a built an audience and they want us to sell to their audience. So I understand why they're mutually beneficial relationship, but it's the idea that they're saying, hey, Comic Book creators on YouTube and this is even talking about fans, just talking about guys like me and Sal, hey, you matter, we know your name and you know ours. Right.
Well, we believe that what you're doing can benefit us. We believe that you're saying can help us as well. And that's like right on. Okay.
Does that community foster? Does that help us out? I hope so. I mean, certainly that would be nice.
But yeah, superficially, I'd say that I can understand why people think that DC is more consumer-friendly. Because DC is at least fostering communication with their audience and trying to make an effort, make a conceit effort. Whether they're doing this properly or even legitimately or not is beside the point, but they're at least trying to foster this narrative of a collaborative relationship between itself and its community. And again, you mentioned the big conference there.
It's not like they kept every promise that they made there and it's not even like you could see through a lot of what they were saying. I remember the thing that always made me laugh was when they were talking about green air and they're like, you know, we sat down with a bunch of the creators and we asked them, what makes you love these characters and these stories? Completely different and excommunicated from the TV show. You know what makes you love them?
And you know, we wanted to go in that direction, but Diggle will still be in the story and he will be wearing his costume from the TV show though. And also Suicide Swell of Major love these characters. You know what? We're the ostrander stories that inspired you, but also it will be the team from the movie.
Right. Because we're a multimedia company, damn it, and this is how it works now. And even if they don't like our movies, at least we can sell some books. Exactly.
I will say that there is no communication at Marvel. There is no communication between Marvel and its creators and there's no communication between Marvel and its fans. Sure doesn't seem that way. And also even the way their creators do, you can tell some guys are just given rough shot to do whatever the hell they want.
Yes. And some aren't. And that's probably not a great work environment. I can't imagine.
I have spoken with a couple of creators at Marvel and I will say that they are thankful for their work, but I won't say that they are happy where they are. And that's all I can say about that, but I will say that it's all about fostering relationships and being open and willing and having a direction is for me the most important thing. This gig that gets you to the next gig. But let's take a look.
Let's take a look at some numbers. I have some right here in front of me from the last two months, April and March. Let's take a look at whether or not Marvel is consumer friendly or not. Just looking at March from 2017, let's look at the top five books.
Okay. And there was a couple of weird outliers. Of course there always is. But you know what?
Like it's still applicable. It's still worth considering, especially because remember that five years ago, the top book was Avengers for Sex Men and it sold 203,000 copies. The number one book of March of 2017, if you can remember, was a book that I outright boy caught it. I told the audience not to buy it.
It was amazing Spider-Man number 25 to reach up to $10 American. Yes. Yes. It was mostly a bunch of fluff and filler.
It sold 113,000 copies. That was the, I made it the number one selling book of the month. Now that's it. And Marvel's justification for that crappy thing.
It's like, look, you might not like $10 books, but you buy them. Well, and here's the thing. Marvel made this book $10. That sucks.
But they also made sure to at least have extra content. But at the end of the day, if your book is $5, then you really only are expected to give us 50% more. And they didn't do that. Like they're just one pages or two pages.
It was just, it was a critically, or yeah, I critically, I say that it sucked. Although I will say that that's in the Ivy Boulder. I'm sure there are some people who really, really loved what happened to me. But Sal, how, if I didn't pay the $10, will I get a short story about Marvel's soon-sumes?
No, you won't, but you probably can get your own whole book story in Marvel's soon-sumes at some point. That's the price that's not a thing. Yeah. And you also get a full page weird, like out of continuity, like story about whether or not Peter and Matt May should get a dog when they, when he was kid.
But anyway, the point being it sold dramatically lower numbers than its five year predecessor. But it was still the number one selling book. Marvel. So here is Spider-Man 25.
We've actually, we've rebooted Amazing Spider-Man three times. Here is the third reboot of Amazing Spider-Man. It's lasted 25 issues. And to celebrate, we're going to charge you $10.
And everybody said, I want that. There was nothing going on in Spider-Man that was eye-catching or event related. It wasn't like a Spider-verse event or anything. You did get the dog-awk thing to Secret Empire.
It wasn't even a Spider-Man event, but you got one little event. Well, that wasn't like marketed. It wasn't like, holy shit, it wasn't like labeled the road to Secret Empire. It wasn't trying to make you, like, there was no gimmick.
It's my point. I was like, did they not? But then I'm like, no, no, no. The secret leaked out like a week before.
Yeah, no bleeding cool to probably do more to sell that book because of the superior octopus reveal than Marvel did. But that being said, it was still the number one selling book. And then, by the way, the next three best selling books that month were all called Batman. Nice.
Dark Knight 3, the master race number eight came out. Cannot believe that still selling as high as it is. I thought most people would have abandoned that. It's literally, it's the same thing as all Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder.
It's the same thing as Dark Knight 2. The book comes out so infrequently, I can afford six bucks. I can afford six bucks every six months or every eight months or every year. Well, some weird master kiss.
I want to see where this goes. Plus, it's like a dumpster fire or a train wreck. I want to see what's happening with this. But Dark Knight 3, master race number eight came out with 107 copies and it was $6.
It was a little higher than what Marvel normally sells for a regularly sized issue. Then it was Batman 18 and 19. Part of the rebirth thing. DC sold two issues with Batman for $6.
For $4 cheaper than me as an Spider-Man, you got two issues with Batman. Yeah. We're good. Is that more consumer friendly?
I say it is. It's definitely more economical. I mean, because that's the thing. What is consumer friendliness and what is just good business and good economics?
Yeah. Now that said, it must be because of the Netflix show that Iron Fist number one was the next best-selling book at number five. And it was disappointing. I bet it plummeted like a mofo after that.
Oh, no. Let me take a look actually at the next month where Iron Fist fell from number five on the slot to number 87 on the slot. Yup, that sounds about right. Holy crap.
That is a fall and a half. Game two. I love Iron Fist. And I like Power Man and I'm sure Luke Cage will have a similar fall for its second issue.
Now let's take a look at the next one for amazing Spider-Man. After the 25th anniversary or after the 25th issue, issue number 26 dropped from $113,000 copies to 62,000 copies. Dropped about half of its readership down to the number 15 spot. Dropped from number one and number 15 best-selling books of that month.
Dang. Dang. Now, so that being, oh, by the way, let's take a look at the top five of April. Secret Empire number zero came out.
That was the number one. It sold 50,000 more copies. That's like Aquaman, basically more copies than amazing Spider-Man 25 for half the price. I like that's the yardstick.
It sold Aquaman more copies. I've used that metric before. Like renew your vows. Cells about Aquaman.
I'm sorry, actually, that's not true. You renew your vows. Cells 25,000. Secret Empire sold double that.
So double Aquaman. Two Aquaman. But how good is Aquaman? Have you seen that new art?
I don't know. I have not, actually. I don't know. I'm not a Remo Aquaman.
I was resident Aquaman guy on the pole. I don't like two volumes behind. I need to catch that up again. Anyway, but looking at the top five.
The Empire, Batman, X-Men Gold, X-Men, Blue, Flash. So it's really, what is it, three Marvel 2D, see? So you see, like you said earlier in the chat, it is just, it's dips and dives, bumps and hills and valleys. Just because Marvel is doing things we don't agree with.
Even then, we don't all disagree with what Marvel is doing. As I say too, the talent is there. The books that are good are really good. Daredevil for everything like that.
The problems are all editorial. No, it's true. Well, is the problem editorial? Because the books that are good are good.
It's because of the efforts of many people. Comics are a collaborative medium that requires artists, writers, editors, colorist, letters, thinkers, all that shit. Printers, the editor has to be doing the good. If you had a shitty editor on Daredevil, it would be as good of a book.
So the question is like, well, we'll get to that question in a minute. But for now, I think that if we were to answer the question from our own perspective, I gotta say, DC looks more consumer friendly than Marvel. They look more cohesive, that's for sure. They're definitely moving as a unit.
DC is doing a better job of selling the sizzle than they are. It's actually selling the steak. Because when it comes to the steak selling, Marvel and DC are both selling pretty okay. If you looked at it, I was just looking at an article regarding the diversity issue.
You know, that idiot who talked about how Marvel isn't selling because you people don't want diversity. Turns out that the books that have the diversity changes sold pretty much as well as they normally did. And they were pulling in the numbers that you would expect from the book. And got great award consideration too.
Like a lot of the Marvel books that they were talking about and that thing are all up for Hugo Awards or New York Times bestsellers too. Yeah. When you're looking at that, when you're looking at the sales at the numbers and the sales and the fact that like, you know, just because people are saying that they don't want diversity, the diversity characters, the diversity character, I like to call them that, but like because it's a stupid, like legacy characters sounds better doesn't it? And it's kind of more truthful, isn't it?
But the changed characters, you know, their numbers are doing just as well as any other numbers or any other of the predecessors numbers when you look at them when you crunch those numbers. And so it's really more of like a culture, whereas, okay, I think that we can look at it from two different, where DC is fostering culture of the publisher and its fandom. It's getting, it's I think going more 21st century where they're like, listen, in a world, in today's world, there are technically the celebrity is dying. Yeah.
That's at least that's something that I like to fear, that I think. I remember watching, I use this example all the time, I'm going to use it again. It's, it's, do you remember Rebecca Black? Yes, Friday.
Got to get down on Friday. Got to get down on Friday. And indeed, she did. But my song came to pass.
Yeah. But, okay, so there was this terrible reporter, I don't know her name, but she's this, she's this stock reporter for like basic television news, like 2020, not Barbara Walters, but somebody else. And she had only about a week or two prior, interviewed Charlie Sheen when he did his infamous Tiger Blood. Oh, yes.
I'm on a drug called Charlie Sheen, Charlie Bean, if you try it once, he will die. That's like, okay, what am I favorite meltdowns ever seen? Because he had total control over the meltdown. He's like, okay, here's the part where I'm out down here and here's where I take it from there.
But not even in an ironic way. I just love saying things that he says, winning. I'm a Vatican assassin on Tiger Blood. He turned his meltdown into a road ship.
He literally took his meltdown on the road and he comes to your town and meltdown in front of you, you pay him $5. So you got that going. And then I think a week or two later, she did the same, she did the same like set, same format where she interviewed Rebecca Black. And do you kind of remember this now?
The interaction that she has between Charlie Sheen and Rebecca Black are night and day and fucking fascinating. She talks to Charlie Sheen, like, oh my God, Charlie Sheen, you're the no good drug addict infarist, Mueller's day off. I want to bang you so bad. Like, I love you.
You're having a meltdown. It's amazing. I'm going to get so many more trainings. Then she talks to Rebecca Black and the questions that she asks Rebecca Black are fucking spectacular.
Because one of them is basically like, so do you think you're good? Do you think you can sing for real? I do remember this now. It's just this fucking, this obnoxious, like, condescending.
condescending where she's like, do you understand? Do you understand that two weeks ago, I had Charlie Sheen on this couch and now you're here. Who the fuck are you? And like, for me, I'm like, hooray, because what it's really saying is celebrities are dying.
Everyone is a celebrity. Youtubers are celebrities. Now, PewDiePie is seen by probably more than like your average movie star. I watch more suppliers, supply 12 consecutive Make-A-Wish foundation requests.
Even person. It was terrifying. But that aside, I'm not saying that celebrities are dead and I wouldn't give a shit if Harrison Ford or some other, or like, Mark or Chris Bond or whatever. Yeah, idea of celebrity has changed.
I'm saying that it's just like, I'm saying that everyone has the opportunity. The old lady who witnesses a grocery store robbery can become a song and have like her whole life changed. Chewbacca Mom can be popular. Chewbacca Mom.
I found her too late, but I laughed my ass out all the same. You know what it is? What Andy Warhol said is coming to pass in the future, everyone will have 15 minutes of then. Absolutely, absolutely.
And so we're all called in. In this culture, we're seeing that the line between celebrity and fan is kind of blurring. And I think that DC is getting on the bandwagon where they're like, no, no, accessibility is higher now than ever before between everybody and what they care about. And so as such, we need to be more accessible.
Like I could literally ruin Kevin Bacon's day by giving him the best cutting edge, just a perfect cut to the quick tweet. If he's looking at his phone at the same time that I want to destroy his day, I technically could ruin it. Ooh, I have to, I have to, I have to, I have to, I have to, I have to, I have to, I have limited power. If I were a sociopath, I would think these things.
But like- I'm not sure which of them. But the fact like is because, I don't wear this point to all this, to this rant, is that the line between like, or the accessibility has increased exponentially. And it's, it's, it's, DC is fostering this accessibility culture, even if it's not even true. They're trying to make you think that they're more accessible.
I have more access to DC, DC's creators and the process at DC than ever before. And Marvel is fostering a completely different, not even mean opposing, because I don't think they're even thinking about it. But Marvel's fostering a completely different culture over there. And I'm not really quite sure what the hell it is yet.
I think they're, I think they're working on it. Like, I think they're, I think they're building towards it or, or they have some kind of direction, but whatever it is, it is not that. And even if it's not, even if DC's method isn't as successful or isn't, isn't financially viable or isn't financially successful, it's successful in as much as it's converting more vocal fans. It's converting more fan, it's, it's tricking a lot more people.
I don't, I don't mean to say tricking because I mean, maybe they are more accessible. God knows, I have more access to DC Comics now than I did 10 years ago. Is it successful or is it because I'm working on this job? Who knows?
But the fact is DC's fostering a culture of connectivity and accessibility with their create with their fan base and Marvel is not. And Marvel's instead fostering a community where it's like about maybe they were trying like diversity or maybe they were just trying to foster a create like a culture of like, we're doing anything. We're trying it all. And who knows if it works?
We almost, we almost. Anything can happen. We're the house of ideas. Yeah, anything can happen.
Anything can happen over here. Here's an interesting thing because I thought about this. We're talking about, you know, comic companies relationship with their fan bases with the readers and everything. What about their relationship with like critics and awards?
I have up here right now the Eisner Awards for this year for 2017. Not many DC books in it. Interestingly enough, here's the thing. So like, what is it?
Best continuing series. We got the Mighty Thor on there. It's the only Marvel book for best continuing series. Best limited series Han Solo, which is technically Star Wars, which technically makes it Marvel.
By the way, just a quick pin in your thing. We all expected Star Wars to be like the number one book for Marvel all the time. It's not shocking. It's not bad.
It's not selling poorly. It's actually always like in the top 20. But it didn't. It wasn't the cash cow that they thought.
And which, oh gee, if only I had 15 to 20 years worth of data from Dark Horse to prove that theory. But anyway, now here's one here too for best new series. Here we actually see a bit of a split. We see Deathstroke by Christopher Priest is actually up for an eyesener for best new series, which I find very impressive.
I thought I was the only one carrying a torch for that series. And the one Marvel one we have here is Mockingburg, which of course got canceled kind of quickly, but still had a lot of love and admiration behind it. So I think that's kind of interesting. Yeah, it is interesting.
Bookscantel, isn't that the one with the cover that says ask me about my feminist agenda and calls the walking with a shit of pants? That's the one. Wow. Interesting.
Going up against Christopher Priest's Deathstroke. Now for best publication, teens age 13 to 17, there's the Hope Larson Batgirl in there and an unbeatable squirrel girl both sharing the same space. Interesting. Very.
And then of course, best reality base work, you have Dark Knight, a true Batman story, but that's more of Paul Dean, you think, than a DC thing. Yeah, that's vertigo. Yeah, it's a vertigo book, which I don't consider. I consider that almost like a separate independent publishing label.
It basically is. But yeah, but these things like that, we also get that though. We can put that on our shit. It's just funny as I look here, it seems that like what is it, the Marvel stuff definitely gets more prestige stuff going on.
Yeah. I will, the other thing is Marvel has, I mean, then it gets into a criticism about Marvel and publishing practices because like, you look at their trade paperback habit. And number one, they do put out trades quickly and efficiently, but DC's trades are cheaper. Yeah.
I get this one 17 bucks, same book would be at Marvel, it'd be probably 20 or more. I've seen some trades that collect like four issues, five issues for 30, which is unfucking believable. But anyway, yeah, it's interesting. Is Marvel less consumer friendly than DC?
Or is there even an argument at this point? I would say that like, no, I think if you cut through it, if you cut through the double speak and the and the smoking mirrors that Marvel and DC are in the same position they were at like five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago. That's the thing about comics. And I've only been doing it professionally for a little bit, but everything in the comic industry is circular and it'll come back again and God willing in five years, if Sal and I are still in this business, we can talk about how Marvel clawed their way back to the top and how DC shit the best.
Yeah, it's funny because while we, it's hard and I acknowledge it's hard to extricate the yourself from your perspective about what's happening. I think that Marvel is doing a lot of like things wrong with their main characters, but they're not, but the whole market is hurting if you compare now to five years to 10 years ago. So you know, they need a shake up. That's for sure.
They do shake up because the question is, are there practices working or are there characters working or are people buying some music Spider-Man 25 because it's like, because Dan Slott did such a great job or because the buzz about amazing spider-man 25 was so high or is it because it was a 25th issue and it was $10 and they like marketed it as like a special double sized bonus book. I mean, I think the characters are as relevant now as they've ever been and will continue to be relevant if I may get, you know, all hoichi toys, superheroes are our modern day mythology and everything. Great. Absolutely.
I think it's just a peak in Valley thing that they're in right now and here's hoping that something does have it more importantly than that. Here's hoping they pick a status quo and stick with it for a little bit. Yeah, but does that, but is that the way to do it? I mean, like while that would help us with that, with that help Marvel, would that help Marvel sell better or would they, or would it only do, would only do them because I'm always worried about them.
I'm always worried about them about these guys about creatives learning the wrong damn lessons. You know, like, like, um, I don't know, selling Spider-Man for $10 for a piece of shit and yet it being the number one selling book that month and kind of being off the number one selling books unless it was an event, not first non event number one, like a best selling book in a while. Um, it's just weird. Like, I don't know.
I don't want them to be like, that's the way to do it. We got to, we got to like every 25 issues make them $10, you know, or, or every two years we got to reboot them all and then, and then give them a new number one. Yeah. Another thing they're saying in the chat and I've seen this sentiment around a lot, but no one ever seems to bother to try and explain it.
They're like, oh, Marvel has a problem with pandering pandering pandering to who and to what? Too woman and how. Um, so broad. It's a statement.
It is a very broad statement and it's like, I would argue that DC is the one that's pandering. They're the one that's pandering to guys like us who remember back in the day. They're given Superman did this. Yeah.
Yeah. They may. They literally replaced the Superman that like four people think is awesome. Like, yeah, that's the multi pandering.
Now that said, Superman's all the selling better than it has probably in a long time. So there's something to be said for that. Is it because they pandered or is it because the story is just also solid? It's funny how hand in hand that is because those books, the Superman books, I've read Superman.
Superman is not the best written book all the time. Um, at least it wasn't when I was growing up. And now it's great. It's, it's not, is it, is it all star Superman?
Is it Superman for all seasons? Not necessarily, but you know what? Like it's, it's, it's as good as the serialized fiction Superman had, like had been where it came from. I mean, uh, you know, it's interesting.
Um, do you think to a DC and like the success of DC rebirth, I see you drinking your Coke zero there and enjoying it. Do you think it was like a new Coke style thing where it's like, Hey, here's the new 52. You're not going to like it. You'll have to deal with it for about five years.
And then when we think you're really sick of it and that maybe we bring Justin up and we'll bring back the old stuff. No, I, okay. That's an interesting conspiracy theory that like DC that new 52 was like a plan or a ploy. I've heard the conspiracy theory about new Coke that like, okay, sales for new Coke.
I've heard two theories about new Coke. By the way, one is that sales are down. We'll replace the thing they like when something sucks. Then when it comes back with a big deal and I'll rebuy old Coke.
I've also heard they wanted to shift over from like regular sugar to high fructose corn syrup that changed the new Coke made it taste weird, brought it back and changed the high fructose corn syrup. And that's what I've heard conspiracy theories about new Coke. And so when you say like, is it the new Coke thing I always associate with a conspiracy theory? Like, did DC?
Oh, and that's a loop we had conspiracy theory. Did DC throw away elder continuity or place it with a big shake up so that they could bring it back. If they learned from the new Coke thing being like, man, I bet if we gave them everything they wanted right now, they'd be super stoked. I think that they were thinking, because they're not getting us everything they want or everything we want.
They're giving us their, they're, it's all part. I think it's all part of their narrative of being like, look, we're all friendly. We love you and we're friends. We have a whole channel dedicated to you, but like they're not giving us everything they want.
They're like, here's some things you want, but like we're still keeping all the stuff that we did. You know, Tim Drake is still red, Robin, you know, she's still don't have no book, you know, I'm sure it's still MIA. Like, just because Superman's back and then got merged with himself. So there's an even more complicated rebooted continuity.
You know, it's weird. I don't know how to, how to square that circle, as Robin said, but, but it's interesting. And the other thing is, and this actually dovetails into a topic that we'll have to discuss in the future, which is, is DC Rebirth a publishing line or is it technically an event? Yeah, that's the thing.
I mean, they definitely, they're connecting more than they ever did before. They're all dropping hints. And you feel like no matter what you read, they're making some sort of reference to this whole overarching watchman thing, even if it's big, even if it's small. Yeah, yeah, it's true.
I have not seen, not since Civil War, I've seen this kind of like interconnectivity in a, in a line-wide publishing spectrum. Because it's like, you know, Batman's got his button, he's dealing with. Superman is dealing with Mr. Oz, the Green Lanterns are dealing with their own problem that are leading to missing 10 years.
The Titans have Wally and are getting a bunch of memories back that they never had before. It feels like it's all little pieces of a much bigger puzzle and one day we'll have to get all our string theory boards out. Oh yeah, totally. So yeah, so Joel, answer the question.
Is, is DC more creative, consumer friendly than Marvel? They might seem that way more now, but I would say the companies probably have more in common that they don't. I just think DC's having a really awesome last couple years. Yeah, I think, but it's funny.
They're not selling better than they were five years ago. They're not, they're not beating Marvel in sales. It's just, I think they're just, like their new coat of paint is just shinier, flashier and nicer looking than Marvel's. They put some flames on it and obviously in science, if you put flames on a thing, it goes faster.
It goes faster and is of course intrinsically cooler. Yeah. So yeah, at the end of the day, I think the answer is no. I think the answer is no.
I think that it's just, I think that, that looks can be deceiving and it just feels like it is. I think that, yeah, I think that when you're hungrier, a sandwich, it might be more delicious, you know, if you're thirsty, water tastes better. And if you're, if you're, if you're hungry or thirsty for, for the status quo and for better written comics, then DC might seem more appetizing than it might just be as good as it was five years ago. And here's another thing too, again, because you know, Sal and myself, we've read comics long enough.