Shelly Bond Was Always Going To Fail

The story is Vertigo Comics' Executive Editor Shelly Bond got reorganized out of her position yesterday. Rumor has it her head needed to roll because Vertigo's sales were bad. We don't know for sure. No one has yet spoken on the record.

What goes unremarked on is that Shelly Bond's job, the head of DC Comics' premiere indie imprint was in danger the instant she stepped into the role.

To understand what went wrong, we have to understand what changed, and who Ms. Bond followed. Ms. Bond followed Karen Berger, the long running editor in chief of Vertigo Comics. Ms. Berger stepped away and down in 2012 after a career that introduced Garth Ennis (Preacher), Neil Gaiman (Sandman), Peter Milligan (Enigma, Shade), Alan Moore (Oh, Come The Fuck On) and Grant Morrison (Invisibles) to the American mainstream. And that's only the 90s. In the 2000s, Vertigo published early major works from Jason Aaron (The Other Side, Scalped), Ed Brubaker (Scene Of The Crime, Deadenders), Brian Wood (DMZ, Northlanders), Brian Azzarello (100 Bullets), Cliff Chiang (Beware the Creeper), Jeff Lemire (Essex County), Becky Cloonan (American Virgin), Scott Snyder (American Vampire), G. WIllow Wilson (Air, Cairo) and Brian K. Vaughan (Y: The Last Man).

How did this happen? Contracts and trust.

The Vertigo contract was structured such that creators kept most of the rights associated with their comic, but Warner Brothers had a first look at any adaptation of the material.

Before Karen Berger stepped into Vertigo, she'd worked for DC for 10 years under the impresario Paul Levitz. Industry gossip tells us Levitz made a deal with Warner Brothers that went to the tune of "as long as we're profitable, you don't tell me how to run my company" and Warner allegedly accepted. Vertigo was given, fittingly, room to fall. Most of Vertigo's perennial sellers did badly in single issues, but made the money back on the collections.

Both changed. Levitz left or was pushed out and the contract was allegedly looked at by a Warner Brothers executive who said "why don't we have these rights" in the early 2010s.

There were two other things that happened which murdered Vertigo and they both start with an i.

The internet is the most obvious, and it decimated much of the physical book market, which is not coincidentally where most people went to spend money on Vertigo titles.

Image in the 2000s was a publishing house that was not terribly exciting. It had The Walking Dead and a roll of the dice. It was "creator owned," but in a world where Vertigo's deal was still the place to go if you wanted an editor and a marketing department talking about your comic, Image wasn't terribly attractive. The major creator owned success stories outside of Vertigo didn't often break 10,000 single issues sold a month.

Image's Eric Stephenson was slowly making deals with people to make Image a player, but it wouldn't pay off in 2000s. It would pay off around 2012, with Brian K. Vaughan's Saga.

And bolstered by the runaway success of Saga, Image turned out more and more and more and more comics, some incredible, some bad, but most okay or mediocre. This caused a second Image bubble.

Now what does this have to go with Shelly Bond?

Ms. Bond steps into the head of Vertigo in 2012, a time when
1) the internet makes pirating things you're kind of interested in easy
2) physical bookstores are sinking
3) Image will ascend to the premiere creator owned comics company
4) Vertigo's m.o., long runs allowed to fail in singles buoyed by strong trade sales will no longer be tolerated by the parent company
5) Bond's ability to manage her house is constrained even more by whim and fiat
6) her predecessor is arguably the most important American mainstream comic book editor in 30 years
7) perception of Vertigo is at an all time low

Ms. Bond's four years at Vertigo, like her tastes or not, were spent keeping a Wile E. Coyote sized anvil afloat.

Shelly Bond was always going to fail.

p.s. Birds in my ear tell me Ms. Bond was a shit boss and difficult to work with.
p.p.s. The sad epilogue is that DC's most widely known harasser, Eddie Berganza, still has a job. Mr. Berganza runs the Superman office.






This is looser than usual and without links, because, well, I'll be talking about this at length for a podcast and I could keep it all in my head for juuuuuuuuuuust long enough to type it out. I'd normally source this stuff, but a couple minutes on a browser and you'll find what I write corroborated. I want it out of my head and into the wild. Song is Murder By Death's I Came Around. I admittedly haven't cared for Ms. Bond's output at Vertigo, but the more I think about the circumstances she had to deal with, the more I had to acknowledge the trying times she faced. Get some sleep, 'mam, you're finally off the clock.

Five Perhaps In Some Cases Somewhat Insufficiently Stressed Reasons We Should All Be Terribly Grateful To Miéville

When I looked around at the "best of 2013" material for comics I found one glaring omission: Dial H. Since I've never written a short list before, I figured what better way to show a deep and abiding love for a product than a hastily compiled thing that takes 30 seconds to read?

1. Traditionally conservative DC taking a risk.

In a relaunch that started out super weird, not only in terms of creator departures and editorial edicts, but also in that there was a no joke supernatural romance comic and a war comic (both concepts Vertigo would retry), Dial H was the strangest one of them all.

When my friends first heard about it, they thought "Oh, DC must hate Miéville. They gave him Dial H." Quite the opposite. He wanted Dial H. Before the relaunch, Miéville accepted a Swamp Thing gig, but that was aborted because the toys were being brought back over to the DCU and Geoff Johns needed a splash reveal in Brightest Day. There was a story in Hellblazer #250 as what I assume was a consolation. So, after the new 52, DC gave Miéville's pitch a shot.

I'm not aware of a higher profile creator relaunching a lower profile title at Marvel or DC recently. Mieville has won most if not all of the major science fiction/fantasy prose awards available to Westerners, and Dial H is best known as the butt of a joke, or as "what DC superhero team is not even D-list?"

2. Dial H was co-starred by a woman who was old and awesome.

Yes. I know. Usually old and wizened characters stand around, look stodgy and then occasionally when a big fight comes, show how they earned their beard. Dial H's lady (Roxie Hodder) did nothing of the sort. She was actively saving lives, appearing in the comic as a major character that did shit, articulated herself well, had opinions and kicked ass.

Also? Sex between two people that wasn't 30-something Bernini sculpture and 30-something Bernini sculpture.

3. Dial H stayed away from current DC continuity.

DC gave (or more likely outgoing Vertigo founder Karen Berger shielded the series from editorial edicts) Dial H enough rope to hang itself with and only checked in when literally every single new 52 comic had to have some major hero in it and even then Miéville made it work with panache.

For fans who wanted a "plays in its own corner and needs to read no other comics" treat, Dial H did that to the hilt.

4. Dial H had a story for adults.

Mainstream American superhero comics are read mostly by people over the age of 30. But hardly ever are comics written for them. There's things that don't insult our intelligence, by and large, but there are hardly ever comics that actually treat adult readers like adults.

Dial H did that. The story was confusing, presented themes like identity, paralysis and inspiration in a way that didn't explain everything at first glance and trusted you were along for the ride. It managed a neat trick of extracting a childish degree of wonder and inspiration out of readers who were supposedly jaded enough to know better.

5. Dial H #13

Dial H #13 is a jewel in the crown, though. I compared it, privately, to All-Star Superman #10, which is a high bar to clear and it probably doesn't.  What matters is that there's a bunch of tricks Miéville pulls in this issue that went largely unnoticed or uncommented on by comics criticism and this whole listicle piece is at best a flimsy veneer for drawing your attention back to it. The focus of the issue was the Dial Bunch (no really, that's what they're called) on the run, in a world with sentient graffiti. Now alone, the phrase sentient graffiti ought to be enough, but the way that these things interface with the story (and advances the plot) is genius. But that's not why I adore Dial H #13, if I'm honest. I adore Dial H #13 above any other comic released last year because of the following single panel origin of Unbled, the Demon.

The entire issue is a celebration of the inspirational possibility of superhero comics, but that single panel stuck out to me more than the constructing tricks, the earnest proclamations of heroism, and quick sketches of future possibilities we'll never see.

(The first two images are pencilled by Mateus Santolouco, the second two by Alberto Ponticelli, the fifth by David Lapham and the sixth by Alberto Ponticelli again.)

I'm Invisible

I need to clear my head about Wonder Woman #7. I'm going to divide this up into "facts," "analysis/opinions" and "what I'm gonna do." Because this is an issue that ought to be dealt with as precisely as possible.

A bit of a thing, I'm trying to draw a distinction between the characters owned by DC Comics and what our collective imagination of a race of warrior women is. Amazons (TM) is the trademarked, Amazons is the cultural imaginary.

Okay. Go.


Facts:

The most current issue of Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chang's Wonder Woman Hephaestus tells Diana that the Amazons (TM) have produced children by seducing sailors and then murdering those sailors after the lustful men had fertilized the women. After they were pregnant, the Amazons (TM) sold the male children to Hephaestus to make weapons.

Whatever the imaginary was for Amazons, it was based in a culture that hated and feared them and so their stories about them would necessarily be bigoted and prejudiced against them.

The Amazons (TM) (as in the trademarked intellectual property of DC Comics, "created" by Marston) are meant to be something empowering for women, according to their creator.

*exhale.*

This issue is the first in a multi-issue arc.

Diana is the only female character descending into Hell.

In issue #4, the implication was that the entire population of Paradise Island was turned into goddamned snakes and Wonder Woman's mother was turned into a statue, begging for mercy from Athena.

This issue is the first in a multi-issue arc.


Analysis/Opinions:

I'd quote Too Busy Thinking About Comics writing about this, but it should be read in its whole. Smart and well thought out. Also, probably right. What he's saying specifically is that Azzarello turned the Amazons (TM) into two of the most pernicious lies about women, not just that they'll seduce good honest men, but also kill them afterwards. Basically: The Amazons (TM) as honey-traps! That's the DCU in 2012! Women as psycho killers!

Worth mentioning, quickly, that men are also psycho killers in Wonder Woman. They're enabling child soldiers in Africa, murdering three women in the first issue and cheating on their wife. If Azzarello's point is also everybody sucks, it's unclear, so far, that he needs to go to the extent of murder rape to make his point.

Though, given that the difference in truths learned between issues 2-4 piled uncomfortable revelation on top of uncomfortable revelation, there is value in saying "let's wait till the arc is over."

I hope this is a fake out.

Maybe, by having the Amazons (TM) doing the things that men are known to do throughout history, Azzarello is saying, not subtly, that this happens in the real world, to women and not by them? Hopefully? Probably as unlikely as two waltzing mice, but hope springs eternal.

This topic sucks the air out of my love for comics. I'll passionately talk about them with my friends, I'm a fucking evangelical for the medium, but, just thinking about this storyline too long leaves me angry and exhausted. At bottom, I'm disappointed and I didn't think Azzarello would be the one to disappoint me.


What I'm Gonna Do:

Azzarello has enough good faith stored up with me that I'll finish the arc. 100 Bullets earned him at least that much. When you add Joker and Luthor to that mix, I'll give him another half of a Wonder Woman arc. That good faith is being spent.

To try to wring some good out of this, when I go next week to pick up my comic books, I'll pre-order Kelly Sue DeConnick's Ms. Marvel relaunch. That seems like one of the better ways to signal my support for female heroes that are written by good writers. Yes. And, with next week, hopefully comes the long delayed next issue of Casanova.

This feels apropos, of course, because Casanova's writer, Mr. Matt Fraction, is married to Kelly Sue DeConnick.






The origin of the title is hard to pin down but in my mind it comes from the Rocket From The Crypt song "I'm Not Invisible." I don't even know right now. But, man, after looking at Wonder Woman #7, in the DCU, women are being made invisible real quick.