Musings...

So, a few hints out of the weekend-o-cons. Nothing has really been nailed down, but they've definitely laid out much more of their plans.

I'm not going to even try and summarize things... just go to the Newsarama site and there'll be a lot more detail than I can provide.

I'm interested in a lot of the things they talked about. There's the re-started Flash series, with Mark Waid writing. Can we all agree that this past series was botched from day one? Not to slam the creators, but they never seemed to be on the right wavelength for the character, surprising since they were the creators of the Flash TV show, which I'd thought was pretty good.

There's the (planned) change in writers for Justice League. Brad Meltzer had never made a secret of when he planned to leave, but now we know who'll be following him up. Dwayne McDuffie is a pretty good choice, though I'm not totally happy there'll be a roster change already. *sighs* Ah well, each writer on a team book brings his or her favorites with them. I'm hoping Prince Brion isn't one of the losses, though. I'd love a clue what's up with him -- especially since he's back to the original costume, the only one which has ever looked good on him, despite the bad memories.

I'm happy to see Doctor Fate getting a book, though only a limited series for now. I know it's related to Steve Gerber's illness, but I do hope the good doctor gets an unlimited series soon. And, of course, I wish the best for Steve.

Now, who's going to do something about giving Ralph and Sue Dibny their own book? Hell, if nobody else wants to, I'll volunteer to do it myself. (Hey, DC Folk, are you listening?) I can think of several interesting angles for their stories, and after all that was invested in their characters in 52 (indeed, as much as the readers invested themselves into the characters) it seems a shame to let them lie fallow.

DC announced that it has bought in to Flex Comix, a Japanese publisher of Manga, with a heavy concentration of on-line comics. Is it just possible that, among other things, it's DC's way of testing the waters for on-line distribution? As a former retailer (with a chain of five stores) I can see where a move like this might frighten the retailers (and moreso frighten Diamond), but there's a lot of potential revenue being foregone because neither they nor Marvel are tapping that stream. I know there's a LOT of fans who get their weekly comics via torrent sites and buy only collections in paper. With some sort of iTunes-like structure, they could bring much of the potential revenue back in-house.

Enough random musing for now. There's lots more news, and I may be talking about more of it shortly.