PAUL LEVITZ
If you are into comics, you already know Paul Levitz is stepping down from his position as President and Publisher of DC Comics. I've known Paul since he was 13 and consider him one of my closest and dearest friends. For years now, Paul has talked about retiring someday soon and returning to writing, his first love. For that reason alone I am so happy for him because I know that's what he deeply cares about and has been wanting. As readers, we are in for some major treats.
I can also say, without fear of rebuttal by anyone who is in the know, Paul is probably the best, the smartest, the most creative and the most moral Publisher the business has ever seen. Most fans have no idea how important Paul is, not only to DC, but to the entire industry. I have often said, and mean, that without Paul there very well might not be a comics industry today. I am not speaking in hyperbole. I am being literal; I mean exactly what I wrote.
The other side of my mind is focused on the future of comics. When you look at the billion dollars plus that Dark Knight grossed, or the hundreds of millions grossed by Iron Man - a character few people outside of comics knew anything about - we see that people love what we do, but that love has not always been reflected in the sales of the comics themselves. Back in the 90s, when I was one of the two founding editors of Disney Adventures magazine - a magazine that sold over a million copies a month - I started calling regular comics a 32 page pamphlet. I meant that to be as derogatory as it sounds.
Comics were trapped in a ghetto; beloved and ignored at the same time. The days of the pamphlet are over. The tail of the dinosaur just hasn't informed the brain. We need to look ahead to other formats, to other kinds of stories to tell and to other ways to distribute what we do. There is a generation now who gets all their entertainment over the net and that is not going to change. We are not going to go back to a 100% paper society. That is ridiculous both for distribution and for the environment. Computer book readers are going to get more popular and when they move to color, there will be no reason at all to have to print a magazine when you can download one to a perfect flat screen with no glare that looks exactly like paper anyway.
Comics have already become a staple of the net as well as the iPhone and other mobile devices. As any reader of this column knows from my endless sales pitches, my own comic, The Man Called A-X, has been available on the iPhone for months now. Yes, I know there are negatives, but technologically the world rarely moves backward. People all over the world love comics, we know that without doubt, but for the industry to grow to where it should be, we've got to find better ways of getting our ideas into their hands, and we also need to tell stories that appeal to all walks of life. I see a bright future for comics, but we've got to move and think forward if we hope to achieve it.
I think that Disney taking over Marvel, and Warner's working more closely with DC, means new ideas can be tried in ways that they haven't been able to before. When you are now part of a large whole, where each part of a company can work with and strengthen the other, the synergy created can bring more notice and therefore more eyes to comics. I'm not naive; I know there can also be downsides, but I believe you don't spend the money Disney did or the effort Warners is unless you believe in the business. We all know there are comics today that sell only in the hundreds and many others in just 4 figures. There should be no reason for so much great material to sell so badly other than our current inability to get people to see it. By looking and moving ahead, by experimenting with new ways to get comics into our hands, we can reach the audience the material deserves to find.
Congratulations to my friend Paul for getting to do what he's been wanting to for years. And congratulations and the very best of luck to Diane Nelson who will help guide DC into the future.
Labels: Paul Levitz
posted by Marv @ 11:07 AM
5 Comments
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5 Comments:
Great post, Marv. I really appreciate seeing your insights on this and the Marvel deal too.
I agree mostly as well. except as a collector, I would argue there will always be a place for the paper held in your hands, flipping the pages. Marvel's Digital comics seem to be doing ok. but I think (And hope really) that there will always be the comics extant in the form I love as well as new media.
Much of the younger generation collects, but they collect digitally, or download when they need to. Do you need the book crowding your book shelf when in 30 seconds you can get the book on your reader? I know people talk about smelling the paper, and I agree; I'm old enough to love that musty smell, but that is nostalgic, and there's a place for it, but the newer generations doesn't have that to the same degree we do, and successive generations will have it less and less. I hope we'll always have real books; art books, map books, travel books, books whose design is so beautiful they are a work of art onto themselves, but for the more standard book, the novel, and in most cases, even the comic, I think it's access to the material we should care about mostly and not the form it comes in. The story's the thing, not the paper it's printed on.
Richard, you speak the truth! Amen, brother!
Long after the Twitter and the trendy-wendy gadgets have turned into stale fads (witness MySpace), can I just read a comic book in paper form, brother?
Brother....can you spare a pamphlet?
You had me (sort of) until you mentioned the idea of synergy... you know that those companies never work together. One department is pitted against another department and they charge each other money to utilize materials that the company as a whole already owns. Disney was doing that back in the nineties, I doubt they've changed that policy. And if they aren't competing they have no idea what the other parts of the company are doing. They're jealous of each other and more than anything rather than be creative, they buy creative....
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