Fish and Cherries Productions

http://www.theouthousers.com/index.php/news/131478-dc-using-spurious-logic-to-screw-creators-out-of-royalties-and-credit.html#

I’m no fan of underpaying creators or throwing the ever insulting “do it for exposure and be happy” at them, but outright cheating them out of their money is completely despicable. I choose to stand by my decision to boycott DC’s comics and movies and encourage you all to do the same. Also, I will not be covering any more of their animated movies in my Reel Snippets. It may not be much of a hit to their exposure, but at least it will be a weight off my conscience. The Outhousers don’t always have the best satire, but this isn’t satire. This is a call to action, one that needs to be answered.

Creators deserve better.

YOU deserve better.

DC Comics, we need to talk.

Oh, sorry, I forgot. It’s DC Entertainment now. Hmm…

I’ve been a fan of yours for a while ever since I picked up a copy of Blackest Night #0 at Comic Con. Remember Blackest Night? You know, that big mega-crossover between all of your stories where the dead superheroes came back and started an invasion of life itself? You remember, it had brilliant writing by Geoff Johns and stunning artwork by Ivan Reis. I do. That was the moment I got into comics. After that issue, I bought every comic that was leading up to it from big crossovers like Infinite Crisis to single comic lines like Green Lantern or Teen Titans. Ever since then, I was hooked on your stories and your universe. I was even a big defender of yours when you started most of your stories from scratch in 2011 in the infamous reboot. I figured if anyone deserved the benefit of the doubt, it was you guys.

Now, in 2014, I’m starting to wonder if I was wrong.

I can’t help but notice that there are some disturbing trends cropping up around you. There was the suicide art contest that turned out very poorly for you and the infamous comic where a previously fleshed out and prevalent female character asked someone for sex just because she was bored, but I’m not here to talk about how you treat your fictional characters. I want to talk about how you treat your creators and even fans.

Let’s talk about the sheer amount of talented writers and artists who have quit or walked out from DC. George Perez, Joshua Hale Fialkov, Andy Diggle, John Rozum, all of these amazing talents have left your company, all of them citing constant micromanagement and last minute changes to their stories as creating an unbearable working condition. That’s not even getting into when Gail Simone, one of the most universally loved comic writers, got fired from Batgirl over an e-mail by an editor and got rehired twelve days later after the backlash from fans. Personally, I think that firing someone over e-mail is about as wussy as breaking up with someone via text message, so suffice to say, not your most endearing moment.

But the big one I have to mention is when Batwoman talents J.H. Williams and W. Haden Blackman left the company after a last minute change banning Batwoman from marrying her girlfriend. The reason given behind said change was that heroes shouldn’t lead happy lives, which is a baffling argument in itself. On a conceptual level, since when are marriages automatically happy? And on a reader level, why should readers care about their heroes if they know that they can never be content? And did you not realize that you would get heat from LGBTQ groups over this?

But the real crime is how this was handled on an editorial level. From what I understand, stories are planned out months, maybe even years in advance, the writers submit their story outlines to the editors, the editors write out notes and changes that they want, and then the writers are free to go from there. These last minute changes are, in a world, unprofessional and unbecoming of a company that has been around for 75 years. What exactly is your plan? What was so important about this that you had to jump in at the last minute? Because this seems like the absolute wrong way to run a work environment.

But you know what? I was going to let it be water under the bridge and move on with my life. After all, most of the stuff I’m bringing up was years ago. I should give you the benefit of the doubt and assumed you learned your lesson, no? But then, come the end of last year, I looked over some facts and discovered that in the 3+ years you’ve been doing the New 52, you have canceled no less than 61 titles. 61 titles? That’s insane! You have gotten rid of more titles than you allow yourself to run. If you do the numbers, that’s as if you canceled a title every two-and-a-half weeks. Fish and Cherries may be a very young company, but even we know that isn’t how you run things. Forget heroes always being miserable, why should readers invest in any of your books when they could be canceled after only eight issues because of some obsession with the number 52?

Maybe it’s the union worker in me talking, but I’ve seen things like this happen before at Wal-Mart, Sears, Dish Network, and countless others. If there was some sort of union in comics, do you think this sort of thing would stand? For crying out loud, this is exactly the sort of thinking that led to the incident with the Bangladesh factory. Haven’t we learned by now that when we treat our workers workers badly, everyone, including the employers, suffer for it? Famed comic writer Neil Adams told me that comic companies sometimes lose money unless they print a license that ties into a movie, but I don’t see how keeping your creators on such a tight leash is going to help you make a few extra bucks. I can also assure you: there has never been a time where mistreating the staff for profit has ever ended well for a company.

So where does that leave me, a once proud fan? Hard to say. It’s hard for me to continue to support you knowing the work conditions that you perpetuate. The big question is, since my dollars are important to you, how do you plan to keep me around and paying? What’s to stop me from, say, giving my money to small comic companies like Mark Waid’s Thrillbent, which was made after he left you guys, or other comic companies like IDW or Pantheon who both create great, forward-thinking stories? I’ve been picking up Image Comics’ stories as of late and I have to tell you, I’ve been more invested, enthralled, and challenged than I have with your books in a long while.

Brian Heinz, a video blogger known as the Last Angry Geek, accused DC Comics of not caring about what the readers want, but rather telling them what they want. And really, he has a point. Few people outside of your staff would say that they want a story with no marriage or personal connections or heroes that are constantly unhappy. So, in response to twisting your creators around, as well as firing then rehiring the most beloved woman in comics, botching an art contest in which suicide was sexualized, refusing to let dissenting bloggers interview your creators until they posted more positive things about you, and making poor marketing decision after poor marketing decision, I ask you the same question I ask myself when I think about picking up a DC book:

What’s the point?

SPOILER WARNING

Man of Steel was complete garbage and one of the most joyless experiences I’ve ever experienced in the theater. It goes against everything that the Superman character stands for and doesn’t even have the intelligence to realize that it isn’t an intelligent redesign. Almost everything is wrong with this film, from the script to the washed out pallet to its failed attempts at being “mature” to the fact that Superman, the ultimate hero of our time, saves no one and actually causes more destruction than the villains. The fact that Superman actually kills General Zod doesn’t help either, not only because it’s a betrayal of the character, but because there were any number of ways that he could have solved that problem, like flying away or sending him back to the Phantom Zone earlier. Hell, the entire movie runs an idiot plot because Zod could have just made the new Krypton on Mars or Venus and never would have had to fight anyone. And Jonathan Kent, Superman’s moral center growing up, suggesting that it might be acceptable to let a bus full of children die when he could have done something about it? If I may drop the pretense of professionalism for a bit…

FFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCKK
YOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!!!

There is nothing to be gained from watching this cinematic stillbirth except the growing realization that you wasted good money and hours of your time. This has officially set my new standard for bad movies. It’s drab, it’s depressing, it’s downright worthless. And do you want to know what the real kicker is? I never knew how much I cared about Superman until I saw him butchered on the big screen.