David, you erroneously stated that I said Blue Beetle had good writing; I did not. I only said that I thought the supporting cast was dynamic and well-written. And that’s really only as far as supporting casts go. Many of the characters are entirely generic; the ultra-capable, badass Hispanic mother, the wisened, sagely father, the muy macho, machismo-spouting best friend, and the ca-rrrazy OCD white girl that hangs out with them. Not to say they’re without depth, but Rogers and Giffen were building off of some pretty old and generic character templates with the supporting cast.

I felt the book lacked pacing, direction, a good “hook,” and completely failed to get me invested in Jaime Reyes as a civilian, while also failing to, as I previously said, establish a good mythology for him (a good setting, interesting rogues gallery, a firm motivation, an unfilled niche for the character) that could sustain a series.

Worse, I always felt that the book wasn’t really about anything. I believe I read an article right here on 4th Letter discussing Grant Morrison’s tendency to connect superhuman mythology to high concept themes that are easily related to; the Flash is about the rapid-fire, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it world we live in, Batman’s about class warfare and the idea of justice v.s. revenge, and Superman’s about striving to reach that higher level, and being the best you that you can be. I don’t think a book even needs to be that high concept. Even an interesting hook will suffice; Green Arrow’s all about dealing in hot topic social issues at the ground level, Green Lantern’s an epic space opera as well as a treatise on both controlling and expressing your emotions, and Checkmate’s a look at global politics within the DCU. At best, Blue Beetle is a coming of age tale about a guy thrown into a world he never expected to be a part of. Which, unfortunately, is what pretty much every teen superhero book has been about since Steve Ditko and Stan Lee unveiled Spider-Man.

Why not work in some themes dealing with the scarab in mythology? Themes of death, rebirth, renewal, and legacy? More than the minuscule amount represented by Dani Garrett and the WWTKD notebooks. Throw in some Sisyphean imagery or plots to connect Beetle to the iconic idea of the dung beetle. Hell, give him some solar-based powers to play on the Egyptians’ beliefs about the scarab’s connection to the sun God, Ra. Which I actually hoped would be touched on when he faced Eclipso. Really, just some metaphor or symbolism, that’s all I’m asking for. Anything to make it more than Spider-Man, as told by Keith Giffen and John Rogers. Except Blue Beetle lacks the drama of a fallible, easily defeated hero, as he has an alien backpack that has no power ceiling, and pretty much allows him to skate out of any situation unharmed.

Those criticisms, even when combined with all the positives I listed, are why I think Blue Beetle failed. Keep in mind, I really wanted to like the book. I was a fan of Ted Kord and really wanted to see something awesome come out of his death. I thought the first few issues with Cully Hamner, who has a real knack for scenery and establishing placement and mood, looked to be setting up a world I could really dive into. Hell, I own a page of original art from issues eight. But after buying every issue to date, I’m left feeling like the whole book could have been condensed into a twelve issue maxi-series and been a much stronger read.

As for books I read currently, I should note that I buy a lot of comics I don’t entirely love, because there are still things about them I enjoy. Such was the case with Blue Beetle. But currently I’m reading Criminal, JSA, GLC, most of what Bendis writes, all of Kirkman’s Invincible-verse books, anything by Jay Faerber, Benito Cereno, Sean Galloway, Skottie Young, Brandon Graham, James Stokoe, or Brandon Thomas, El Diablo, Booster Gold, the DnA Marvel cosmic stuff, Firebreather, Secret Six, and a huge pile of other shit I’m too lazy to list.

But my favorite books, the stuff I still go back and read every so often, are the ones that meshed a great cast of heroes, villains and supporting characters, good writing and art, interesting, original setting, and a good high concept. Books that spring to mind immediately are Starman, Hourman, Chronos, Young Heroes in Love, Power Company, Young Justice, Stuart Moore’s Firestorm, Beatty’s Son of Vulcan, Zeb Wells’s New Warriors, the classic Blue Devil series, Arcudi’s Doom Patrol, Major Bummer, and many more.

I was speaking with David Uzumeri from FBB earlier (who i am trying to bully into writing a response piece to this post), and he raised a few interesting points. I think we’re at the point where the companies and the fans have trained each other to expect certain things, resulting in a snake eating its own tail.

Confirmation bias is something that’s pretty common, especially in bloggers, myself included. I like variant covers, though not from a sales POV. I think being able to have a choice of covers is just something that’s pretty cool. I liked being able to see the puppies & rainbows X-Force variant, or JRjr’s covers to New Ways to Die. Them being 1 in 10/20/50/100 makes me uncomfortable, but that’s how companies earn money. If someone is willing to purchase it, and it isn’t hurting anyone, is it the wrong thing to do?

I think that as we move toward trades or OGNs being an equal, or nearly equal, format (I can dream!), we might move away from that kind of thing, but the major comics companies are still banging the 32-pager drum as hard as they can.

I don’t know, it’s a complicated situation and probably a bit out of my weight class. I don’t know that I can figure out an answer to the situation. Marvel had a good take on things during the Quesada/Jemas era, around 2002, when each book was in its own “universe.” Morrison’s New X-Men, Jenkins/JMS Spider-Man, Reiber/Cassaday Captain America, and etc. There weren’t big-name crossovers between the books. Of course, x-overs come back and sales go up… so it isn’t as black and white as I’d like it to be.

Not that crossovers are evil, of course. :)

Overall, I agree with most of your points, and it’s unfortunate. It’s why there’s a growing discrepency between what people say they want and what they show they want, and why ultimately, no matter how loud the complaints are about books’ successes being so dependent on variant covers, event books, continuity porn etc. the businesses of comics must always go with what the market shows they want with their spending dollars.

And unfortunately, this isn’t the video game industry as someone alluded to, where not being in the top 25% of sellers doesn’t contitute a failure. More often than not, if you’re a major-league company with major-league overheads and fixed costs, you’re going to find that the revenue break-even point is pretty friggin’ high, and if less than 15,000 people don’t think a book is worth paying 2.99 for, it’s going to be cancelled simply because it’s costing more money to print and distribute than it earns, no matter how much the people who DO buy it love it.

But it does seem like you’re cherrypicking a bit: “Looking at the top 300 books for September 08 tells me one thing. There are exactly two books in the top 20 that fall into the critically acclaimed column–”

I’d say Buffy and Cap both fall in that column, and there are some other damn good books among the top sellers. Granted, Buffy is a special case. But Brubaker’s a marquee name *because* of Cap — and vice versa, really. I don’t think there even was a Captain America solo book for a number of years, before Bru took it over. If you’re argument is that “critically acclaimed” = “underdog,” then saying that critically acclaimed books don’t sell well is circular.

I don’t mean to discount the larger point, because it’s true that nobody (marketing/retailers/readers as a group) seem to know what to do with books that aren’t hitched to the event train — even as we all complain about events. But I’m not sure BB is a great example of that, anyway. It spun out of Infinite Crisis. It seemed to have an obscure cameo in every issue. It’s hard for me to think of a book with a Metron guest shot as being low-continuity. It seems like DC is in a real bind of needing new readers but having no idea how to talk to them. So even a book like BB has continuity porn written into it, when I’d much rather have just seen more about the kids and their friendships and their community.

Though after writing this, and having a few conversations with other bloggers, I need to do a post on what makes a series a failure vs a success, and why ongoing series may not be the best way to do a series. Sometimes the Hellboy model can work for more than Hellboy.

@Eos: I wonder if fans like me, who only pick up trades at sales and used book stores can be blamed too? If so… screw it.

You are correct– I buy 90% of my trades off Amazon or from Green Apple Books. That’s why I own things like Round Robin’s Revenge, one of the most amazingly mediocre Spider-Man arcs from the ’90s. Punisher, Darkhawk, Nova, Moon Knight, oh my.

Anyone who thinks you should buy a book you don’t like because you SHOULD do it is a fool. I’m a firm believer in buying what you enjoy, and enjoying what you buy. I cut my comics pull list back hard and now I buy a few books a week that I really, really like. I think on a day when I get 100 Bullets, a Bachalo Amazing Spidey, and Joe Casey/Derec Donovan’s Youngblood, I might die on the spot.

I’ll admit that part of this is in reaction to everyone else going “ARGH DC KEEPS SCREWING US AND CANCELLING GOOD BOOKS!” I agree that the blame isn’t entirely on the fans or on the company. I hope I got that across in the bit where I talk about how companies have built up this culture of importance around certain books.