Like A Plant Stuffed With Good-News Tarantulas, DC Set To Explode

It's no secret that whispers and rumors of a new publisher at DC Comics have surged and faded over the last few weeks like a ghost radio playing in the upstairs room of a haunted house. Now according to a much e-mailed link (at least to me), Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes apparently said a couple of days ago that any number of announcements are due in terms of the film and video side of things, which one would guess would come with some sort of committed partnership from the publishing arm. In other words, it would be a fine time to announce a publisher. It would be a good thing -- and an important one -- to know even in broad strokes just how DC's comics publishing will move forward for the immediate present, if that's going to be part of it. I do wonder about radical transformation. While there's always a possibility for a game-changing move of some sort, what seems more likely at this point with some of the moves already made is some sort re-arranging of furniture with a lot of words like synergy and tentpole being used, buttressed by the occasional new initiative like the stand-alone Superman and Batman to-bookstore books. It seems to me that comics sort of works in this weird and hard to change way, fashioned out of the greater retail landscape stone drip by drip over three decades and that it's really difficult to revolutionize anything created in that fashion. I could be really, really wrong, though, and usually am.

According to gossip, any new publishing initiative announced in the coming weeks may include a sustained Watchmen initiative resulting in sequels and prequels to a comic a) many believe has enjoyed its considerable power over the years in part because it's a single and undiluted work, b) would re-irritate a considerable part of the creative community that believes Alan Moore wasn't dealt with fairly on the project over the years. My worry is we might see a version of Watchmen where the costumes look like hard plastic, Rorschach practices spinning kung-fu, the violence is excessive and all over the place instead of measured and thematically important, Lee Iaccoca makes a cameo and everyone is slightly better looking than they were in the original comic except maybe for Ozymandias. That would be awful.
 
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