The Corner Box

Year in Review: The Big Picture on The Corner Box S2Ep13

• David & John • Season 2 • Episode 13

Share episode

On this episode of The Corner Box, hosts John & David gather round the fire to reminisce about the past year in comics, and get into the reinvigoration of older properties, how different publishers approach existing properties, DC and Marvel’s Absolute and Ultimate Lines, DC’s $10 books, and PRH’s disruption of the industry by purchasing Boom! Studios. Also, most definitely not in the spirit of the Season, David is mean to several people.

Timestamp Segments

  • [02:07] David’s thoughts on Prince.
  • [04:08] The success of GI Joe and Transformers.
  • [05:38] Properties moving to new publishers.
  • [09:01] The new GI Joe launches.
  • [14:09] ThunderCats.
  • [14:47] The changing perception of comics properties.
  • [16:08] Relaunching properties out of their time.
  • [19:59] Marvel’s Ultimate Line.
  • [21:16] David’s take on Donny Cates.
  • [23:47] DC’s Absolute Line.
  • [27:12] What’s up with Zatanna?
  • [28:40] DC’s $10 Compact Comics.
  • [36:36] Boom! goes to PRH.

Notable Quotes

  • “He was the B-average student in a room of D-average students.”
  • “I’m looking forward to seeing how they completely screw it up and dismantle it all.”
  • “Marvel movies didn’t start making a billion dollars until Disney started distributing them.”

Relevant Links

David's Fun Stuff!
Did Someone Say Fun Time? Let's GO!

John is at PugW!
Pug Worldwide

For transcripts and show notes!
www.thecornerbox.club

Books Mentioned

Welcome to The Corner Box, where your hosts, David Hedgecock and John Barber, lean into their decades of comic book industry experience, writing, drawing, editing, and publishing. They'll talk to fellow professionals, deep dive into influential and overlooked works, and analyze the state of the art and business of comics and pop culture. Thanks for joining us on The Corner Box.


[00:28] John Barber: Hello, and welcome to The Corner Box. I’m one of your hosts, John Barber. That's my whole name, and I have another host here.


[00:34] David Hedgecock: David Hedgecock.


[00:35] John: That's right.


[00:36] David: Yeah. That's me.


[00:37] John: I wasn't sure if I was actually doing the intro this time, and then I only halfway did it. So, there we go.


[00:43] David: We share the responsibilities, John. As in all things with this podcast, we share responsibilities.


[00:49] John: Yeah. We've talked about what we were thankful for. We're heading into the end of this delightful year. It’d be interesting to look back.


[00:55] David: We thought we’d do some reflection, John. Reflect upon our souls, look inwards for once, instead of outwards, always worrying about what other people are doing, and superficial things that are happening. We're not going to actually do any of that. We're going to talk about the year that was in comic books, John, but we're not going to do our Top 10 list this time. We probably will do something like a Top 10 list, but that's not what we're doing this time. We're going to talk about the things that have happened in the industry this year that we think, you think, and I think, are going to have big-time impacts moving forward in the future, and already are making big waves in the industry. I'm excited for the topic. It’s a good one, John. You picked a good one.


[01:35] John: One of the big stories this year, that tangentially impacts me, or in a roundabout way, reflects poorly on me, it was the rise of some licensed comics at different publishers than we were at before. Most specifically, what I'm talking about is Transformers and the huge success of Transformers at WildStorm— not WildStorm.


[01:57] David: We have John out of the 90s today, people. Let’s all help bring John into the end of 2024, instead of the end of 1994.


[02:04] John: Please don't. No.


[02:05] David: Do you want stay in 1994?


[02:07] John: Maybe.


[02:06] David: Here's a thing, John, that I was thinking the other day, and this is wild to me, it has nothing to do with comic books, but I'm going to bring it up anyway. I was thinking about Prince, as you often do - everybody does - and Prince's first big hit album, which is Purple Rain, and I was like, “what year did that come out?” and it's 1984, and then I thought to myself, that year, 1984, that album came out, that felt like a million years away from World War 2, to me, but it was 40 years.


[02:38] John: Yeah.


[02:39] David: and then I was like, “wait. Oh, my God. It's been 40 years since that album.” So, that album came out 40 years after World War 2, and it is 40 years since that album came out, for us right now, and that is a shocking realization, for me. It does not feel like, and I was mentioning this to somebody else, and they were saying, “if we were doing Back to the Future today, they'd be going back to 1997.” Oh, God.


[03:12] John: Yeah, I try to think of those things all the time, because it helps put things in perspective. That is brutal. Yeah, you're right. It's interesting, also, to go back and think about how a thing that I didn't realize then was, how relatively recent stuff from 1944 was then. The opposite is also true, that part of, these aren't things that just exist because they're there forever, and you're always going to remember these works of fiction or storytelling. If you're 50, that's what you grew up with. It's strange that Spawn is older than Spider-Man was when I was a kid, and all that kind of stuff.


[03:51] David: Even talking about the stuff this year, I’m like, “oh, my God. That only happened this year?” Thinking about some of the stuff that we’re going to talk about today, “that was just this year?” Happened seven years ago.


[04:02] John: Yeah, no doubt.


[04:03] David: Maybe that's the opposite of what I'm talking about with the other stuff, but It's been a year. So, you wanted to start with the Transformers, which I think I totally agree, was a bit of a sea change within the comic book industry, for a couple different reasons, but it certainly was the beginning of something big.


[04:23] John: I mean, honestly, you can go back and see us talking about this a year ago. I'm more surprised at the success of GI Joe than I am at the success of Transformers. I'm more surprised that they managed to reinvigorate GI Joe, as a brand, as much as they did, but this is one that I wonder if the wrong lessons are going to get learned, but a lot of people, where it's going to turn into when the ‘89 Batman movie hit, continue to show our age, the immediate reaction from Hollywood was like, “oh, people like fictional characters created in the 30s. So, let's do The Phantom and the Shadow, and Dick Tracy,” and your mileage may vary. I love the Dick Tracy movie, and I love Dick Tracy, and I love the Shadow. I like that stuff, but no, Batman was a different animal than those characters. Batman was a contemporary character for everybody, or at worst, a 60s character.


[05:16] David: 60s television show. 


[05:18] John: and I do wonder if there's going to be another influx of picking up a bunch of 80s properties that really nobody's going to care about.


[05:27] David: Yeah, I think we've seen a little bit of both.


[05:29] John: Yeah. The trick is going to be telling which one’s which.


[05:34] David: I think you're right. I do worry about the wrong lessons being learned. I don’t know. We haven't talked about it. For me, the lesson learned, a couple of things, I think just going to a new publisher, I think, did bring a lot of interest to Transformers, in particular, and GI Joe, even more so. I think just going to a new publisher just hit the reset button for everybody, and allowed lapsing fans and casual fans, and non-fans, to truly feel like there was a jumping on point, whereas IDW could say, “hey, here's a new jumping on point. Here’s some things we’re going to do differently. Here’s how it's going to look different,” but at the end of the day, the weight and breadth of the back catalog was always going to dominate the landscape, in terms of the IDW version of Transformers. So, even though things might be different in totally radically new, it wasn't going totally going feel like that because it was still at the same publisher, whereas when Skybound comes in, there is no back catalog. Issue #1 is the only issue that exists, as far as Skybound’s concerned, and that truly does create, for lack of a better term, a fresh start. I think that is legitimately one of the things that created the hype around this launch.

Another thing is that Transformers, in particular, I think, is not an 80s property. The last Transformers movie was last year. You get a Transformers movie every couple of years for the last two decades. You also have animation. There's various forms of animation that are all hitting. So, the movies and the animations, and stuff, they're all in various stages of the 20-year generational cycle, where people— trying to concentrate while we've got a dog dancing on the Zoom call. It’s adorable.


[07:31] John: I'll take her downstairs in a second.


[07:33] David: No, she's fine. I like having her in the room. I want her to be around. So, Transformers is not an 80s property. That's not a legit thing. That’s not a real thing. It's not what that is. So, that's another piece of it. Then, the final piece, the third of my two-part piece, is that the talent that they put on Transformers, in particular, I think everybody's in agreement that Daniel Warren Johnson is probably a generational talent. The guy is writing and drawing. Everybody's interest in what he has to say. Everybody’s interested in what he's doing. He's got a fresh, unique style, an interesting voice. Seems to have something to say, and he's really come into his own, in terms of his ability and power. The guy was primed to do something like this. I still remain shocked that he chose to do Transformers as the thing to do, but it seems to be paying off for him, it seems to be rewarding him in other ways, outside of building his own personal back list and back catalog. The next thing, well, it's already happening, The Moon is Following Us, I think Issue #1 is sold out. It’s in its second or third printing by now. I think it's already happening for him, but having that just extremely qualified talent, that everybody is interested in following, at the moment, was the other thing that helped really launch the Energon Universe, Transformers, Daniel Warren Johnson. For me, those were the real lessons.


[09:01] John: I think there's something, particular to what Daniel Warren Johnson’s doing, that is hitting the right time, the right vibe for this year. That was one of the first things I thought of, looking back on this year, was that writer-artist telling a story that is extremely visual. I don't even know if there's that much - I don't mean this in a snotty way - but if it's actually saying that much, as much as the feeling of how it's being done is just so exciting to everybody. The closeness of the writing with the art, the way they're inseparable, in Transformers. It is Transformers, even when Corona is drawing it, really. I feel like that's very now and very present. The weird part, like I said, the thing that surprised me the most was GI Joe. GI Joe is an 80s property. I mean, literally, it existed in the 60s and kept going afterwards, but the fans of GI Joe are fans of 80s GI Joe, really, for the most part. No offense to everybody else, but it also didn't have that unique auteur style to the roll out. It was different writers, different artists. So, yeah, it just seems like it was well managed. I don't think it was just from a very good and aggressive cover campaign. I think there's genuine excitement about the material in it. I don't know. It's interesting.


[10:25] David: That one’s head-scratching to me, too. I feel like they did the one thing that I thought they had to do, which was continue Larry Hama's GI Joe, and they put some really good artists on the book, and I think for that, for your baseline GI Joe, that's what you needed to do, and that’s what they did, and it makes perfect sense. So, there you go, but for some reason, the Larry Hama GI Joe, somehow, the messaging has been good enough that it's not getting in the way of them doing other GI Joe stuff. The people that love GI Joe, potentially, or seemingly, or maybe it's just all-new audience, seems to be willing to try other versions of GI Joe. Whereas, that hasn't always been the case, in the past. In the past, it’s been, “Larry Hama’s GI Joe or get out of my face.”

It's interesting that they've been able— I'm also just like, “wow, that's great,” because I'm a GI Joe fan. I love GI Joe, and I think what they've done with the GI Joe property, both with the Larry Hama stuff and with the new stuff, the modern stuff, has been really fun. I'm enjoying the reads. Art’s rock solid. Story’s rock solid. I think the way they've rolled things out, with the miniseries, introducing the individual characters, especially that Cobra Commander miniseries. That was really fun, but it's good to roll those out, get everybody's feet wet for the launch into the new GI Joe, but then I didn't feel like that was some huge groundswell that was building, but apparently, it was because, man.


[12:02] John: I feel they tapped into a thing that I don't know if IDW ever did, even going back before us, with any of those properties, which is that it felt a lot like when Dreamwave and Devils Due brought GI Joe and Transformers back, and I mean, those were huge hits when those came out in whatever it was, circa 2001/2, and the fans that were into that were the people that were like “Oh, yeah. I like GI Joe. Yeah, Transformers. That was cool,” and I think by the time it got over to IDW, which took over the license from both of those companies, as they went away, even though IDW launched its own version of those characters, it wasn't like there was some radical disconnect, some different era of comics that came into it, as much as everybody did stuff differently, and everything. It wasn't like you went from the 80s version of it in your head to the 2000s version. It was like you went from the 2006 version to the 2007 version, or the late 2006 version, or whatever, and the relaunches at IDW, the same thing, but I think by then, it had distilled down to a hardcore fan base that was very solid, but I don't know, had an upper limit for how much it was going to go, and maybe it was just the material we were putting out, but I do think there's something to having the opportunity that a new publisher gives you, and then just playing it exactly right, Daniel Warren Johnson on one side and then the roll out of GI Joe without launching with the GI Joe series.

I think there was a time, at IDW, they relaunched a GI Joe, they took GI Joe out of the title, so they didn't have to have GI Joe in it, because the brand was at that stage, and it’s not like there was a lot of brand rehabilitation that went on outside of it. There was some. You did start having GI Joe going back into stores, as toys. That wasn't the case for the last several years of IDW having it. ThunderCats seemed like that was a big hit when that came out.


[14:11] David: You got, I feel like, Daniel Warren Johnson/Transformers/Skybound, they launched the year in this really impressive way, and I think it really just seems to have reignited people's interest in that licensed property that's traditionally been a comic book, but has had several different publishers. So, yeah. Soon after that, you get another seemingly huge hit, over six figures worth of copies sold, on Thundercats #1.


[14:48] John: Yeah, and at IDW, with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, that was a relaunch where it didn't move anywhere, did really blow up, I think bringing in Jason Aaron as a writer, and some real topflight artists, I think probably, and this is a comic that was already a big hit. Last Ronin was already very successful. So, I think that even follows a different path, of it building on the positivity that was coming out of Last Ronan, and then having a relaunch of the comic with somebody that people outside of the Turtles community know who it is. I would think that part of it is, in some way, the perception of some of the licensed stuff isn't as ghettoized as it used to be within comics, because all this stuff is all these things now. Captain America is a series of movies, and etc, but there's something maybe more distinct about a lot of those properties. Daniel Warren Johnson did a big Wonder Woman story. It seemed very successful, but not successful next to Transformers.


[15:53] David: Not even close.


[15:55] John: But I think that, “oh, it's another superhero story. They put somebody really good in a superhero story. Of course. They always do that,” but then you get to Transformers, the perception’s a little different. Those are my conclusions.


[16:06] David: Further down the line, I think you also get some interesting things happening. You’ve got Mad Cave picking up Dick Tracy, for example, and running with Dick Tracy. On the opposite side of that is something like, for me, at least, as far as I can tell, and this is not to denigrate anybody or what anybody's doing, but Oni Press launched the NacelleVerse, and I think that might be the flip of it. Whereas, those are properties that are firmly of a time that only a very specific number of people will remember, like Sectaurs. Who is going to remember that or know what that is? And then combined to that, I think all these NacelleVerse properties, I think, might be eventually having a shared universe. I don’t know. It's a little confusing, and I feel like that's the version, not to say that you can't have a successful Sectaurs comic. Just to say that, man, that didn't play out the way I bet they expected when they were looking at ThunderCats numbers, because that was a big launch. That was Oni Press’s Free Comic Book Day launch, if I recall correctly.


[17:18] John: Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, I don't know if I should be saying this, but I picked the first issue up off of the rack and was like, “I really should have this. I really should read this, out of professional interest,” and then I was like, “but I have no interest in this. I just don't. The intersection point between what the comic looked like in my memories of the properties on it, just wasn't in my zone of wanting to find out how it turned out. 


[17:50] David: I feel like I'm pretty firmly in the age group that would have been interested in Sectaurs.


[17:56] John: Sure. Warriors of Symbion, David.


[17:58] David: I don't really know what it is, and I think I'm supposed to be the target. So, I read it. I thought it was. It was a fine comic book, but I think there were story beats in there that were like, “this is going to be a big deal for all those Sectaur fans,” but what it ended up being was me not being a Sectaur fan, and probably a lot of people reading that comic book, who are just sampling it. There's no big “wow” moment for somebody who's coming into the stuff with zero knowledge. Again, not to say that anybody's doing anything wrong or right. Just that there is a cautionary tale with all these sorts of things, and not everything gets to be the giant huge success, like Transformers or GI Joe, which has definitely been played well, and also is just reaping the rewards of Skybound’s continued success in publishing, in general, from Walking Dead to Invincibles, and so on.


[19:00] John: Yeah, and it is very much a thing to think about, where like you were saying in the beginning, that 40 years ago was this stuff this. The relaunch by Devil's Due and Dreamwave was 15 years after the heyday of these properties. That's something from 2009, not from 1986 now. It either has to be a really special property, the way you could have relaunched something from 1944 in 1984. It’s not impossible. That could happen. You can relaunch Sherlock Holmes, and if you do it right, it becomes a hit TV show. That can happen. Doesn't happen automatically, and I don't know, when you're aiming at an 18-month product cycle for Max Steele’s RoboForce, there's a lot of people in the world who are not paying attention to it during those 18 months, where that was a product you could buy in stores.


[19:58] David: So, another big thing, John, that I think happened this year, along the same lines as just relaunches, in a way, is Marvel and DC wanted to get in on that action, too, but how are they going to do that, because they've got continuing existing universes that they're always supporting nonstop? But they came up with the thing that they've done before. Well, Marvel just went back to the well, which is something Marvel seems to do a lot of in the last couple years, and they brought back their Ultimate Line. So, they did a refresh, a restart, a New Universe by bringing back one of their tried and true, with their Ultimate Line.


[20:37] John: We just talked about it, and we didn't bring up, and I’d utterly forgotten that this is ever a thing, because it was a while ago. Donny Cates was originally slated to write the Ultimate stuff, and then when he had the car accident he was in, and all that stuff, he was out of the picture, and what wound up coming out was a revamped version of a thing they were going to do, with Hickman at the controls this time, instead of Cates. Do you remember that?


[21:03] David: No, I didn't know that, and now that you say it, it vaguely rings, but I didn't really know that that was a thing, because Donny Cates just disappeared for a while. That's all I know, really, about Donny Cates.


[21:16] John: Yeah.


[21:17] David: I think I've told you my— I'm sorry for Donny Cates. I hope he's okay. I hope he comes back to comics. I think maybe he’s already starting to come back. I think Donny Cates is a fine writer, but here's my take on Donny Cates, and again, I don't mean this to be really mean, but I guess, kind of mean.


[21:31] John: Uh oh.


[21:32] David: Donny Cates is the guy who, during his run on Venom, and a little bit before that, he was the B-average student in a room of D-average students. He was so far ahead of everybody else, but he's an average writer. It was just that everybody else was so below average around him that it made him look like a superstar.


[21:58] John: That was slightly mean to several people, David.


[22:00] David: He's a fine writer, and I enjoy his stuff, but man, I think he just benefited from being in a spot, the right moment, right time guy, and just nobody else around could rise to the occasion. He was able to rise up enough to get over the top. I think Donny Cates needs more baking, to be honest, assuming his career gets back to the trajectory it was in, and he's back to where he was before. I think five years from now, Donny Cates is going to be that guy, but I think he got a lot of recognition for his work, and got put on some really big stuff when he wasn't really deserving of that, except he was the most deserving, at the time. So, to finish my thought, on the opposite end of that is Jonathan Hickman, who is that guy, and who has proven that many times, and who is definitely in a position where I think, when he wants to, he can hit a home-run anytime he wants, basically. It's just a matter of whether he wants to or not. So, putting him in charge of this new Ultimate Line, basically launching the Ultimate Line, ultimately, probably, was better for that line. I think Ultimate Spider-Man has been in much better hands right now, with Jonathan Hickman, and everybody leaning into Jonathan Hickman's Maker world, that’s good move. Whether it was purposeful or not, or whether it happened by circumstance, I think Marvel's benefiting from having an architect at the bottom of this thing, who knows how to build a really good, rock-solid foundation, and who has some really cool, interesting, seemingly new, seemingly fresh ideas.


[23:46] John: Yeah. I mean, as we talked about at length in our, I don't know, a couple of episodes ago. Who knows, these days, but DC's Absolute Line also launched out of a big crossover that I think was not a reboot of the universe, but a relaunch of a lot of titles, I think, just in regular DC. I have no clue what DC continuity is, whatsoever, anymore. I can't tell what's in and what happened. I don't know if Batman punched Guy Gardner in the Justice League building or not – whatever – but they're definitely a different universe series. It seems to take a little bit more liberties with the premise than some other relaunches have taken. Basically, the premise of all of them is, “but what if they were poor, and then most of the time, also had big swords?” and they go to great lengths in the stories to demonstrate “they don't deserve to be poor, but this Dark Universe has made them not be rich,” and then “how do heroes struggle through that?” Turns out, they all struggle through really well. I really enjoyed these comics. I mean, it was a […] thing for me to say, but I'm fully enjoying those comics.


[24:58] David: Yeah. So far, for me, I've only read Absolute Batman, but the thing that I'll say about the Absolute Line – we’ve talked so much about it lately - but it’s a popular topic, John. We have to talk about things the fans want to hear. So, we’ve got to talk Absolute and Ultimate lines. I just actually got my Absolute Wonder Woman #1, and my Absolute Superman #1. So, I'm actually going to, just this weekend, I’ll be reading it. So, next time we meet, or by the time this podcast comes out, I will be much more informed on these titles, but I did read the Absolute Batman, but the thing that I think that was very interesting about the Absolute launch - a couple of things - One, it seemed like DC got behind it in a really meaningful way, throughout the Summer. They really did a good job of getting information out there about what it was, having ash cans available at San Diego Comic Con, the marketing was on point and focused, and Scott Snyder Was really good. He was everywhere. This summer, you couldn’t download a single podcast without him being interviewed, except for us, of course, because he turned us down. No, we didn't ask him. I wouldn't know how to reach him. Well, I guess I could I shouldn't say that.

The messaging for that book was really good and it got a lot of people really excited, and then they delivered. They delivered a really cool project, and Nick Dragotta's the bee's knees. That guy's fantastic. Putting that guy on the art. So, we've talked all the rest of it, but that was another thing I don't feel we quite touched on that was really interesting about those two lines, but I think the Ultimate Universe and the Absolute Universe are going to be big deals in 2025. I think seeing them launch this year seems to have excited the comic-buying fans out there, definitely resulting in some fantastic sales. Absolute Batman #1 is the bestselling book of the year. I think I saw something about 2 million copies, but that can't possibly be right. That’s a good one. I'm looking forward to seeing how they completely screw it up and dismantle it all in 2025. It’s going to be a journey, John. It's going to be super exciting when they have Absolute Zatanna in September 2025.


[27:12] John: There's a current Zatanna series that is very good. It's a very good series.


[27:17] David: Are you reading it?


[27:18] John: Yeah. Javier Pulido on art and Mariko Tamaki writing it. Terrific series. Really enjoying it. So, now I'm looking up something online, and there was another Zatanna series a year or two ago. All these are different creative teams. What is up with that? That's a weird character for DC to really push.


[27:37] David: Yeah, is there something going on where she's going to get a TV show, or something? That's the only thing I think of. I was thinking about that the other day, too, but I'm glad to hear that you like that series, because I've been meaning to jump on board for that, because Pulido’s just, that guy's so good. So, I want to read that series, but I just haven't gotten around to it, but maybe that'll be the thing that pushes me over the edge. Anyway. Just picked Absolute Zatanna because— that's exactly why I picked it, because it seems like they keep trying to make Zatanna a thing, and I don't understand why.


[28:13] John: Yeah. I mean, no offense to the character. It’s not like it’s not a perfectly cool character, but it's just—


[28:19] David: She talks backwards. It’s cool.


[28:20] John: Yeah, she's a magician in fishnets. Cool.


[28:24] David: Is she still in fishnets?

[28:25] John: Yeah.


[28:26] David: In the current version?


[28:27] John: Yes, for the story is about her trying to not do magic, and her just being a stage magician. It’s a whole thing in the current one, but yeah, I think that's still basically her look, yeah.


[28:40] David: A side note here, because the next thing that I wanted to talk about is a DC thing, specifically, and I think we talked about Ultimate Line and Absolute Line, and the launch of the Absolute Line, seemingly, much better executed than the Ultimate launch. So, DC launched, this year, a new $10 book program, where they are formatting the books in a manga size, and offering them giant tomes worth of material, for a low price of $9.99, and that thing has blown the doors off of sales for just about every retailer that I've talked to, and just anecdotally, that you hear. So, a wildly successful program. They're doubling down in 2025 on this. I think it's really cool that, I think, Marie Javins might actually be the real thing that broke out in 2024, because Marie Javins is now the Editor-in-Chief of DC Comics. She’s been the Editor-in-Chief since about, I think, 2020 or 2021. What we're seeing in 2024 is probably, really, the first real full flush of her, in her full power, in full control as an Editor-in-Chief at DC Comics, and man, what a year they've had.

I think in the last couple of years, DC Comics has completely taken over, from Marvel, the title of which publisher has the most interesting artists. I think DC's stable of artists working on different books is much more varied and much more interesting than it has been in my entire reading experience. There is no house-style DC right now, and I love it. 100% on board for it, and I think Marvel has gone the other direction, where they've leaned even more heavily into their Marvel house-style. They don't have as many interesting things happening on the art side, at Marvel, as DC does right now. There are exceptions to the rule on both sides, and I think Marie Javins, over the last couple of years, has absolutely had a dramatic impact on that side of things, and that impact probably came in pretty early, but this year, now what we're seeing, is Marie Javins coming in, she's developing the Absolute Line when she comes in, and now that's launching, she's developed the All-In style of storytelling, and developing Mark Wade up into launching him into a big book, and putting big talent on big books, and I think it's all starting in this $10 line of books. I think that stuff is probably coming from the Editor-in-Chief. There’s a lot of people involved, but a lot of that stuff is the Editor-in-Chief leading the pack.

So, I think Marie Javins, in 2024, might be the thing that broke out at DC. I'm here for it, because I think everything’s pointing in the right direction for DC, and I've never been a bigger fan. The $10 book and the Absolute Line are definitely, I think, important. They might be symptoms of what the underlying thing is, which is Marie Javins is in full control. Conjecture, on my part.


[31:46] John: Yeah, the $10–I wasn't sure how successful that line has been. I just had no idea. They're nice-looking. They're tempting, because they're so cheap. There's books in there I have no reason to buy. I don't need a worse version of Watchmen, or whatever, but there's other stuff where it's like, “all the Darwyn Cooke Catwoman stuff in one package.” The downside is, the art’s a little smaller, and that's what I want to see, but the plus side is, it looks pretty good, and all of it for $10.


[32:19] David: Yeah, and I think it's not necessarily for us. I think it's meant for more of the casual reader. I think it’s also meant for the younger reader, who's very familiar and comfortable with that format.


[32:32] John: Yeah. It’s a nice enough format that it's similar to other things, without— I feel like there was a push, at certain points where like, “manga is selling, and it's 6-by-, whatever size. That means we make our comics that size, and that will sell,” and it wasn't just the format, and all that, but this seems to be going in a different— a nice medium between compactness and readability, and making things look nice, and I don't mean to say that my absurd, sometimes, concern about the quality of print reproduction is what anybody else is looking for. It’s why MP3s became popular. It did what people needed it to do, way better than everything else did right then, and was the quality as good as CDs? No, but you can put 10,000 of them in your pocket, and people wanted to do that more than they wanted the slight imperceptible-to-the-human-ear quality difference.


[33:30] David: Right. The other piece that I didn't hear you touch on, in talking about these $10 books is, for me, I think it might be the most important piece. It’s all a mix, but another important piece is, it's the actual curation of the line, because they're picking really good content, and that's what you see, in the United States, at least, with manga. We're not getting every single thing that shows up in Shonen Jump. We're just getting the highlights. We're getting the hits. That's all we get in the US. Nowadays, maybe we've got a little closer to some of the mid-tier stuff, but in the early days of manga, in the last 20 years, all we've really been getting is the best of the best. So, DC’s, I think, learned that lesson, in particular, and that's what DC’s doing. I think that's part of the success of this line, as well, is that they're giving us Watchmen, they're giving us Darwyn Cooke, stuff that's going to really resonate, and really cool material, instead of going like, “Well, we don't want give away our best stuff, because we're giving it away so cheap.” It's like, “no. Let’s give people the best stuff. Let’s bring them in, and give them the best stuff we’ve got, for a great price.”


[34:38] John: Yeah, and DC’s always had a really good tradition of having those perennial, evergreen stories that you could pick up and sell in bookstores, from the day when you started to have comics that you were selling in bookstores, that weren't unusual novelties, but they really got away from that during the early 2000s or mid-2000s. When we got to the world where everything was being reprinted in paperbacks, that was cool. I love that. I think that's great, but those other paperbacks became a second periodical, and a lot of times, those were so incomprehensible. I mean, if you were reading Green Lantern during the Geoff Johns run, in paperback form, there are literally books where you have to read an issue of one book, pick up a different book, read an issue of that book, and then go back to the first book, and read the next two issues, in order to follow the story properly. There's this disconnect between “this is a book, and it looks like you could read it, but you can’t. You have to go online and find out how to read this.” Yeah, you're right. The format points you to the curation, I guess. “Here. Look at this. You can read this. You want to find out about about Catwoman? This is going to make sense. It's going to be good, too, but it's going to be actually readable,” and you'll go in there, and it isn't just the seven issues of Catwoman, and there's a crossover in the middle of it, and they don't reprint that issue, or whatever. The graphic novel’s in there. Other stuff's in there. It's very smartly done. I think you're right. That’s somebody taking a real outside look at how they're presenting things, and figuring out, “here's a way to present this, in a way that works.” Yeah, that's a good call.


[36:23] David: It seems like they're continuing the line, and supporting the line, in the right ways. It seems like they're listening to the retailer base. I’m excited to see how that moves forward. The last one, John, that I thought was a big deal was the announcement of Boom! Studios being purchased by PRH, Penguin Random House. We talked about this, I guess, in the summertime, around the time that it was being announced, but I think the reverberations and repercussions of that haven't even started yet. We'll start to see those in 2025, but I think Boom! Studios being bought by Penguin Random House, there's a couple things, and again, we've talked about it a little bit- one, it gives PRH a really interesting catalog of toys that they didn't have, and makes them instantly a player in the direct market, in a way that I don't think they've ever been before, and then the other side of that is that PRH is one of the major distribution channels for comic books in North America now, and now, they're going to distribute Boom! Comics through their channel, which cuts the knees out from under Diamond Distribution, in a meaningful way, and we are seeing it happen in real-time, right now, with Diamond Distribution shutting down one of their two major warehouses. I think that domino, when PRH bought Boom!, back in spring, is falling now, with Diamond shutting down one of its biggest warehouses. Those two things correlate directly to one another, for sure.


[38:01] John: Yeah. There’s two big things that I think are interesting, and the side of what it affects Boom!, I think it's interesting that Boom! was one of the most Hollywood-centric companies, when it started. It wasn't what they were later on, but they really started in that world. They were fully enmeshed in the world of the big book publisher. It's a different world, coming in. That's not usually who buys these companies. Usually, it's a cellphone company or something, whatever Internet company bought Warner last. It’s usually some outside company that is treating the IPs more like tennis shoes, or something, than entertainment properties, and this is the opposite. This is going to be somebody coming in and treating it more like book publishing treats it. The distribution side, what that means for Penguin Random House Distribution, and everybody who's distributing to them, who, no matter how big a comic book publisher they are, they’re second banana. That's going to be the weird part about it, is Marvel movies didn't start making a billion dollars until Disney started distributing them.


[39:11] David: Right. That's a perfect example, John.


[39:15] John: When you go to a book fair at school, it's Scholastic properties that they're putting up there, first and foremost. As much as I love Dog Man, as much as I love Raina Telgemeier, the reason everybody knows who they are is because they are in schools. You can't be a child in school and not see them.


[39:37] David: Exactly. Yeah, and Boom! is now part of that infrastructure.


[39:40] John: I actually don't know if it was ever illegal, in comics, for that to happen. It certainly used to be illegal for film distribution companies to distribute their own movies, or for networks to show their own production company shows. I don't think there was ever anything in comic books that did that.


[40:02] David: I don’t know that it was ever illegal. It was just dumb.


[40:04] John: No, it was completely illegal. It was 100% illegal. That's why Buena Vista Distribution was a separate company.


[40:09] David: I'm talking about comic books. I don't know if—


[40:13] John: […] tried, it was the other way. The only time anybody tried it was Marvel buying Heroes World, and that was a terrible idea, and this is the opposite of that. It's going to be interesting to see. So, yeah. How many times have I said it's going to be interesting to see? I do think that's going to be something that plays out over, I think, a couple of years, but we definitely haven't seen what the effects of PRH buying Boom! have been, and friend of the show, Michael Kelly, shout out to him, because he is the only person we ever talk about who might actually listen to this, is a publisher there. So, good for him.


[40:48] David: I’m super excited for Boom!, in terms of where Boom!’s going to be at, in a couple of years. I think the arrow’s pointing almost straight up, and then on the other side of that, Diamond, I think we're seeing, already, I don't know where that distribution system's going to be, in two or three years. I think it's already wreaking havoc on retailers, the shutdown of that particular distribution center, and we're already seeing delayed shipping and late dates because of that closed shipping center, and I don't know how that's going to get better, or if it's going to get better. So, it's going to be interesting to see how this all shakes out, in terms of the direct market distribution systems, overall, which certainly directly impacts all the comic bookshops and comic book retailers. So, it’ll be an interesting time. I think 2025 is going to be interesting to watch, on that piece of things. John, any predictions for 2025?


[41:46] John: That should be a whole other episode. We should do an episode of predictions for 2025. We should get a guest. We should do a round-robin, even a guest, like Chase or Dave, or somebody, and do a round-robin. We each have three predictions that somebody's going to do, and then at the end of—I think I'm ripping this off from Triple Click— at the end of next year, we'll see who won, and then we all have to read a comic that person picks.


[42:11] David: I like that. Thanks, everybody, for listening to us talk about all the things that happened in 2024, that you already lived through.


[42:17] John: Thanks, everybody, for joining us on The Corner Box. We’ll be back next week.


[42:20] David: Bye, everybody.


Thanks for joining us, and please subscribe, rate, and tell your friends about us. You can find updates and links at www.thecornerbox.club and we’ll be back next week with more from David and John, here at The Corner Box.