How Not To Write A Comic Book - DC Again!

February 24, 2010 2:46 AM | Comments:

I think I already have to take back everything nice I just said about Dan Didio.

Apologies for no other reviews this week, I had to go out of town. But when I got back, I felt compelled to cover this one issue, no matter how delayed.

A few days ago he was promoted, and the hope was that he could do the big picture stuff without making egregious mistakes in judgment. However, Outsiders 27 has come out, and it was awful. If an editor can't write a good comic, how can we believe that he can do much else good involving comics?

The entire point of an editor is to have someone who can act as a guardian for the writer, someone who will ask you questions about your choices, point out obvious mistakes, and generally help you to improve your end product. With Outsiders, Didio has proven in only two issues that he doesn't understand the first thing about good writing, which tends to make me conclude he is also a very poor editor. My fellow blogger Ryan has been much more merciless than I, and many of the older columns attack Didio for one poor decision after another. I have always tried to give credit where it might be due, and choose to believe that he must be doing something right somewhere. No longer.

What makes a person cancel a comic subscription? It can be unrelated to comics, of course. Maybe you lost your job, maybe you'll be out of country for the next year. Maybe your girlfriend doesn't like them, and has somehow made you give them up (shudder). If that last one is the case, you need to find a spine, but whether you do or not, you definitely need a cooler girlfriend. But I digress...

Sometimes it is mildly related to comics, such as an increased cover price. Other times, the story is good but the art is terrible, or vice versa. On the worst occasions, the art is lacking, and the writing is horrendous. Welcome to the Outsiders.

Outsiders 27

by Dan Didio and Don Kramer

There are so many things wrong, it is actually hard to figure out what to mention first. Let’s start with the repetitiveness, in the form of the Masters of Disaster. They’re on the cover, and they have been the main opponent of the Outsiders for a long time, but we haven’t seen much of them. Like the Fearsome Five, they have lost members over the years, and they needed some fresh blood. We get a quick intro and not much else. If this was a Spider-Man comic, it wouldn’t be so bad, because he has so many members for his rogues gallery, it’s even odds that a new writer will start a story arc off with a familiar villain. In this case, Didio had the opportunity for a fresh new start… and he chose the oldest villains he could get his hands on. Negative points for originality.

Second point: what the (censored) happened to the artist situation?!? Philip Tan was heavily showcased to be the new artist on the book, and it was a main reason I hung on… and he only does the cover! That right there is cause for dropping a book. The bait and switch wouldn’t be so bad, since I tend to have a high opinion of Don Kramer’s work, but the interiors are awful. Maybe it is just from poor inking, but too many of Kramer’s panels lack any definition or substance. Drab, bland interiors of brown and gray, with just a few colorist tricks here and there to disguise the fact that about four full pages of the issue are of one hallway. Folks, we haven’t even gotten past the cover yet!

The first page is terrible, with Black Lightning shouting Geo-Force’s name and brandishing his energy power at the ruler of a sovereign nation. All because he was kept in the waiting room for a couple hours. It’s an artificial attempt to create a dramatic moment of tension, and it falls on its face. Black Lightning has never looked more petty. He acts like a five-year-old, and continues with threats against the new Eradicator.

The next slip-up comes when Didio has the team go crawling back to Alfred. Remember, this is the same Alfred that drafted the team, took an advisory role, and then slammed the door shut in their faces and told them they were on their own as soon as the new Batman needed his services. This is followed by some wonderful exposition, as the door to a lab is melted. The brilliant guard next to the door says, “The door… it’s melting?!” Gee, thanks for stating the obvious for the reader. I haven’t needed a description like that since 1978. Someone needs to tell Didio that you don’t have the art show what is happening and then have someone on the same panel waste our time by explaining what the picture is already showing us.

For an abrupt digression, Owlman asks Katanna to step out into the hall. I’ve never liked Owlman. I liked the Owlman from Earth-3. This Owlman is too derivative of Nite Owl from Watchmen, and provides a too-obvious yet simultaneously not-enough Batman presence. Didio has tried to spring a romance between these two in order to give them something to do, and it feels way wrong. Katanna immediately assumes he wants to talk about Brion or her issues with Jefferson, but Owlman, the newer member of the team, is the one who decides something is wrong with the lady. Just about any other team member should have dibs on talking to Tatsu about her personality change.

Wait, it gets worse. After just a couple sentences, they get closer, as if to kiss. From out of nowhere, Geo-Force is standing there to interrupt them. No words, just an attempt to create an awkward moment. They succeed, but not because the moment feels awkward in the story. It’s because the artificiality has made us overly-conscious that Didio is sticking things in here that don’t belong, and the awkwardness comes from us feeling embarrassed for him.

We get a one-page sub-plot with the Creeper going home in his civilian ID, which is the first thing that makes any sense. Why did he or Owlman agree to come to this country in the first place? What holds them to this team? They don’t even have any of the history that the other members have. We see the new lady from last issue, and she sits next to her target. Is she a good guy? Is she a super-powered menace? Is she a young stalker who randomly has obsessed on Jack Ryder? We don’t know, because the art doesn’t tell us, and the writer doesn’t give us any hints. He also keeps it so minimal that nobody cares.

Back to the awkward part, Geo-Force immediately jumps to an accusatory conclusion and assumes Owlman and Katanna were talking about him. Why is Owlman hanging around for this abuse? Why has Geo-Force become such an obnoxious ass, when he used to be the most considerate member of the team? Geo-Force assembles the team (finally!) to go fight the Masters of Evil, but right when the emergency happens, we get to see three of the members calmly walking away. Not running to the emergency, mind you: just strolling along. Owlman wants to talk to Black Lightning.

Owlman suddenly declares that he thinks Geo-Force tried to kill himself from his fight with Deathstroke. This was from a one-shot by Brad Meltzer months ago. The sudden mention of this, and the miraculous observation by Owlman has to be delivered now? It really is out of place, showing that Didio has no sense of pacing. These two still manage to catch up to the others, so they all make an entrance at the same time to fight the Masters of Evil.

As soon as the Outsiders see who they are facing, and Geo-Force makes his bold opening statement against them, Black lightning… turns to Brion and chews him out?!? What’s wrose, he chews him out over a non-issue. Jeff tries to claim there are innocents around and Brion is being negligent, but in the very next panel, Brion declares that the people are safe, and he has moved the villains out of the building. How he moved them out of the building, we don’t get to see. See, they were standing in front of a safe, then hit with a big rock. The Outsiders are shown standing over by the entrance. Yet somehow, the bad guys have all moved past them to the outdoors. I guess Brion threw them through a wall, but the art doesn’t show it.

We then get to the fighting, where Didio offers such glorious commentary, such as Black Lightning saying, “That’s right! Back off!” Gee, that’s worth my money. Geo-Force throws a boulder at Dust Devil and hits Owlman too, prompting Jeff to stop fighting yet again (!) and run over to chew out Brion. Brion notices this time, and asks Jeff what he is doing, yelling at him while they should be fighting.

Somehow, just the fact that these two are having a spat draws the attention of all the other heroes, and the villains. Rather than taking advantage of the scene, they are distracted as well, and settle in to watch the show. In a move that shows the title has just jumped the shark, Black Lighting actually uses his lightning power against Brion. No sooner does he apologize than Brion decides he’s going to take out his teammate. Rather than remaining apologetic (you know, the way he was just one panel earlier?), he gets aggressive again and decides he wants to fight.

I know what will happen next. Geo-Force will fight Black Lightning. Beyond that, I don’t care. The art is so bad, I can’t even believe it’s Don Kramer’s art. There is no sign of the original forest surrounding the lab complex hidden in a mountainside. Once the team is outside, we get nothing but blue sky and rocks. So even the art is inconsistent, as well as bad. Visually, the entire issue is boring. The new Eradicator is suddenly shown floating around with everyone else in the final panel. When did he show up? Nobody knows!!!! Metamorpho has picked up New Wave for some unknown reason, even though he already knocked her out four pages ago. No mention of Halo anywhere.

It’s not just me. By the time I called up the comic store to cancel the title from my pull-list, I was told that I was the third person to cancel this week alone. That’s less than two days after the issue came out.

Didio had a chance to take a comic and do something with it. The idea was that there wasn’t much farther the title could go down. Guess what? Didio found a way to take it farther down. The book has had so many creative team shake-ups, confusion and contradictions, it needs to be put to rest. Maybe in five years or so, it can be tried again, but as it is, the sales figures alone should kill the book in another two-to-four months. What a waste of some good characters.

This is my second DC spotlight, and they have both been negative. The two I did for Marvel, on the Fantastic Four and the Inhumans, were both positive. This is not to mean I have a bias for or against a particular company, far from it. It’s just the way things have shaken out these past couple months. I have actually been highlighting the different good things DC has been doing to challenge Marvel’s place at the top of the market for some months now.

However, the idea of someone like Didio, who has taken the rope and managed to hang himself twice at the same time somehow, being in charge of the direction of DC in any way, shape or form, is just distressing. I understand the idea of an executive not needing to “get it” as far as knowing everything about the characters, or all of the nuts and bolts associated with an industry. Still, in a creative enterprise such as comic books, you do need to understand the basic principles of telling a story. Didio has taken those and butchered them here. I hereby join the chorus to ask that he be sidelined and/or removed as soon as humanly possible, before he ruins something else. Forget the Masters of Evil, this is the guy that does the most damage.

Tpull is Travis Pullen. He started reading comics at 5 years old, and he can't seem to stop.

I think I already have to take back everything nice I just said about Dan Didio.\n\nApologies for no other reviews this week, I had to go out of town. But when I got back, I felt compelled to cover this one issue, no matter how delayed.\n\nA few days ago he was promoted, and the hope was that he could do the big picture stuff without making egregious mistakes in judgment. However, Outsiders 27 has come out, and it was awful. If an editor can't write a good comic, how can we believe that he can do much else good involving comics? \n\nThe entire point of an editor is to have someone who can act as a guardian for the writer, someone who will ask you questions about your choices, point out obvious mistakes, and generally help you to improve your end product. With Outsiders, Didio has proven in only two issues that he doesn't understand the first thing about good writing, which tends to make me conclude he is also a very poor editor. My fellow blogger Ryan has been much more merciless than I, and many of the older columns attack Didio for one poor decision after another. I have always tried to give credit where it might be due, and choose to believe that he must be doing something right somewhere. No longer.\n\nWhat makes a person cancel a comic subscription? It can be unrelated to comics, of course. Maybe you lost your job, maybe you'll be out of country for the next year. Maybe your girlfriend doesn't like them, and has somehow made you give them up (shudder). If that last one is the case, you need to find a spine, but whether you do or not, you definitely need a cooler girlfriend. But I digress...\n\nSometimes it is mildly related to comics, such as an increased cover price. Other times, the story is good but the art is terrible, or vice versa. On the worst occasions, the art is lacking, and the writing is horrendous. Welcome to the Outsiders.\n\n Outsiders 27 \n\n by Dan Didio and Don Kramer \n\nThere are so many things wrong, it is actually hard to figure out what to mention first. Let’s start with the repetitiveness, in the form of the Masters of Disaster. They’re on the cover, and they have been the main opponent of the Outsiders for a long time, but we haven’t seen much of them. Like the Fearsome Five, they have lost members over the years, and they needed some fresh blood. We get a quick intro and not much else. If this was a Spider-Man comic, it wouldn’t be so bad, because he has so many members for his rogues gallery, it’s even odds that a new writer will start a story arc off with a familiar villain. In this case, Didio had the opportunity for a fresh new start… and he chose the oldest villains he could get his hands on. Negative points for originality.\n\nSecond point: what the (censored) happened to the artist situation?!? Philip Tan was heavily showcased to be the new artist on the book, and it was a main reason I hung on… and he only does the cover! That right there is cause for dropping a book. The bait and switch wouldn’t be so bad, since I tend to have a high opinion of Don Kramer’s work, but the interiors are awful. Maybe it is just from poor inking, but too many of Kramer’s panels lack any definition or substance. Drab, bland interiors of brown and gray, with just a few colorist tricks here and there to disguise the fact that about four full pages of the issue are of one hallway. Folks, we haven’t even gotten past the cover yet!\n\nThe first page is terrible, with Black Lightning shouting Geo-Force’s name and brandishing his energy power at the ruler of a sovereign nation. All because he was kept in the waiting room for a couple hours. It’s an artificial attempt to create a dramatic moment of tension, and it falls on its face. Black Lightning has never looked more petty. He acts like a five-year-old, and continues with threats against the new Eradicator.\n\nThe next slip-up comes when Didio has the team go crawling back to Alfred. Remember, this is the same Alfred that drafted the team, took an advisory role, and then slammed the door shut in their faces and told them they were on their own as soon as the new Batman needed his services. This is followed by some wonderful exposition, as the door to a lab is melted. The brilliant guard next to the door says, “The door… it’s melting?!” Gee, thanks for stating the obvious for the reader. I haven’t needed a description like that since 1978. Someone needs to tell Didio that you don’t have the art show what is happening and then have someone on the same panel waste our time by explaining what the picture is already showing us.\n\nFor an abrupt digression, Owlman asks Katanna to step out into the hall. I’ve never liked Owlman. I liked the Owlman from Earth-3. This Owlman is too derivative of Nite Owl from Watchmen, and provides a too-obvious yet simultaneously not-enough Batman presence. Didio has tried to spring a romance between these two in order to give them something to do, and it feels way wrong. Katanna immediately assumes he wants to talk about Brion or her issues with Jefferson, but Owlman, the newer member of the team, is the one who decides something is wrong with the lady. Just about any other team member should have dibs on talking to Tatsu about her personality change.\n\nWait, it gets worse. After just a couple sentences, they get closer, as if to kiss. From out of nowhere, Geo-Force is standing there to interrupt them. No words, just an attempt to create an awkward moment. They succeed, but not because the moment feels awkward in the story. It’s because the artificiality has made us overly-conscious that Didio is sticking things in here that don’t belong, and the awkwardness comes from us feeling embarrassed for him.\n\nWe get a one-page sub-plot with the Creeper going home in his civilian ID, which is the first thing that makes any sense. Why did he or Owlman agree to come to this country in the first place? What holds them to this team? They don’t even have any of the history that the other members have. We see the new lady from last issue, and she sits next to her target. Is she a good guy? Is she a super-powered menace? Is she a young stalker who randomly has obsessed on Jack Ryder? We don’t know, because the art doesn’t tell us, and the writer doesn’t give us any hints. He also keeps it so minimal that nobody cares.\n\nBack to the awkward part, Geo-Force immediately jumps to an accusatory conclusion and assumes Owlman and Katanna were talking about him. Why is Owlman hanging around for this abuse? Why has Geo-Force become such an obnoxious ass, when he used to be the most considerate member of the team? Geo-Force assembles the team (finally!) to go fight the Masters of Evil, but right when the emergency happens, we get to see three of the members calmly walking away. Not running to the emergency, mind you: just strolling along. Owlman wants to talk to Black Lightning.\n\nOwlman suddenly declares that he thinks Geo-Force tried to kill himself from his fight with Deathstroke. This was from a one-shot by Brad Meltzer months ago. The sudden mention of this, and the miraculous observation by Owlman has to be delivered now? It really is out of place, showing that Didio has no sense of pacing. These two still manage to catch up to the others, so they all make an entrance at the same time to fight the Masters of Evil.\n\nAs soon as the Outsiders see who they are facing, and Geo-Force makes his bold opening statement against them, Black lightning… turns to Brion and chews him out?!? What’s wrose, he chews him out over a non-issue. Jeff tries to claim there are innocents around and Brion is being negligent, but in the very next panel, Brion declares that the people are safe, and he has moved the villains out of the building. How he moved them out of the building, we don’t get to see. See, they were standing in front of a safe, then hit with a big rock. The Outsiders are shown standing over by the entrance. Yet somehow, the bad guys have all moved past them to the outdoors. I guess Brion threw them through a wall, but the art doesn’t show it.\n\nWe then get to the fighting, where Didio offers such glorious commentary, such as Black Lightning saying, “That’s right! Back off!” Gee, that’s worth my money. Geo-Force throws a boulder at Dust Devil and hits Owlman too, prompting Jeff to stop fighting yet again (!) and run over to chew out Brion. Brion notices this time, and asks Jeff what he is doing, yelling at him while they should be fighting.\n\nSomehow, just the fact that these two are having a spat draws the attention of all the other heroes, and the villains. Rather than taking advantage of the scene, they are distracted as well, and settle in to watch the show. In a move that shows the title has just jumped the shark, Black Lighting actually uses his lightning power against Brion. No sooner does he apologize than Brion decides he’s going to take out his teammate. Rather than remaining apologetic (you know, the way he was just one panel earlier?), he gets aggressive again and decides he wants to fight.\n\nI know what will happen next. Geo-Force will fight Black Lightning. Beyond that, I don’t care. The art is so bad, I can’t even believe it’s Don Kramer’s art. There is no sign of the original forest surrounding the lab complex hidden in a mountainside. Once the team is outside, we get nothing but blue sky and rocks. So even the art is inconsistent, as well as bad. Visually, the entire issue is boring. The new Eradicator is suddenly shown floating around with everyone else in the final panel. When did he show up? Nobody knows!!!! Metamorpho has picked up New Wave for some unknown reason, even though he already knocked her out four pages ago. No mention of Halo anywhere.\n\nIt’s not just me. By the time I called up the comic store to cancel the title from my pull-list, I was told that I was the third person to cancel this week alone. That’s less than two days after the issue came out.\n\nDidio had a chance to take a comic and do something with it. The idea was that there wasn’t much farther the title could go down. Guess what? Didio found a way to take it farther down. The book has had so many creative team shake-ups, confusion and contradictions, it needs to be put to rest. Maybe in five years or so, it can be tried again, but as it is, the sales figures alone should kill the book in another two-to-four months. What a waste of some good characters.\n\nThis is my second DC spotlight, and they have both been negative. The two I did for Marvel, on the Fantastic Four and the Inhumans, were both positive. This is not to mean I have a bias for or against a particular company, far from it. It’s just the way things have shaken out these past couple months. I have actually been highlighting the different good things DC has been doing to challenge Marvel’s place at the top of the market for some months now.\n\nHowever, the idea of someone like Didio, who has taken the rope and managed to hang himself twice at the same time somehow, being in charge of the direction of DC in any way, shape or form, is just distressing. I understand the idea of an executive not needing to “get it” as far as knowing everything about the characters, or all of the nuts and bolts associated with an industry. Still, in a creative enterprise such as comic books, you do need to understand the basic principles of telling a story. Didio has taken those and butchered them here. I hereby join the chorus to ask that he be sidelined and/or removed as soon as humanly possible, before he ruins something else. Forget the Masters of Evil, this is the guy that does the most damage.\n\nTpull is Travis Pullen. He started reading comics at 5 years old, and he can't seem to stop.

How Not To Write A Comic Book - DC Again!

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