Your 2024 Predictions, Part Four: The Takeover.
Still got a few more of your 2024 comic industry predictions to go (and here are parts one, two and three), so let’s get crackin’!
Bunny Clover luckily hops in with
“1. marvel will have a big summer event
Indeed they did! Blood Hunt is what we got for 2024, along with the introduction of the polybagged “Red Band” editions with ex-tree blood ‘n’ guts pages not found in your standard bowdlerized Marvels. Happy Summer, Everyone!
“2. boom studios will have a lumberjanes kickstarter”
And yes, they sure did! Raised nearly $350,000, blowing way past their $25,000 goal. Geez louise, I should do a Kickstarter…I bet there’s an audience for a collected edition of my Frank Miller’s The Spirit fanfiction.
“3. dc will put out an omni of artemis of bana mighdall comics”
No, doesn’t look like it. I think the character is still popping up here and there, but I feel like during merchandise pushes for the Wonder Woman movies would have been prime time for one of these!
Scott Rowland comes ashore with
“1. Dark Horse will restructure and try another line of super-hero books.”
It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I think Hellboy is about as regular a superhero “universe” as they’ve got…oh, wait, there’s Black Hammer, too. But not anything really quite as overt as the 1990s’ “Comics’ Greatest World” line.
Speaking of which, I’m surprised there haven’t been more attempts to revive and re-utilize a lot of those old CGW properties. I mean, wither Motorhead?
“2. Based on the success of facsimiles of the Secret Wars and Spider-Man black costume series, Marvel will announce an on-going series of X-Men facsimiles, starting with a re-issue of Giant Size X-Men 1, then continuing with issue 94 on.”
Oddly, it looks like they’re doing small series of Uncanny reprints, but they started with issue #130. Go figure.
“3. DC will announce Steve Englehart will do another Batman series, with variant covers taken from old Marshall Roger artwork.”
Nuthin’ doin’, but too bad, I’d have liked to have seen that.
Joe Gualtieri tears in with
“1. DC will, after yet another money-wasting snafu by the understaffed collections department, finally hire some more people for it again.”
Apparently the initial attempt at printing the Amalgam omnibus had to be destroyed due to errors, and I suspect that wasn’t a cheap mistake. Don’t know if that brought about more hires, but I’m going to presume the opposite.
“2. Post-Crisis Batman omnibus announced.”
Do you mean, like, a reprinting of stuff from the mid-to-late 1980s? Man, I’d read that. Alas, not yet. But when it does happen, this better be one of the covers:
“3. Diamond goes under.”
Ooh boy, try again next year.
Rob S. burgles the following
“1) I always post a Legion prediction, so here’s one that feels like a shoe-in: Geoff Johns will reintroduce members and designs of the pre-Bendis/Sook Legion, making it a crapshoot as to which version of the Legion is the current one again. To complicate matters, the Bendis/Sook version will make a guest appearance elsewhere in the DCU.”
We had one or two appearances of the Legion last year (one of which is described here) and of course we got the Evil Legion in the DC All In special. They do appear to not be the Bendis/Sook versions, which I guess are just thrown on the big pile of Legion reboots over in the corner there.
“2) After largely publishing limited series for years, smaller publishers begin experimenting with ongoing series. (AHOY just announced its PROJECT: CRYPTID title is now an ongoing; I’m hoping other publishers follow their lead.”
I haven’t seen a huge move in this direction…I feel like for smaller publishers the marketplace is too fragile to assume any series they do will have persistent sales beyond a few issues. Especially right now, with Diamond teetering on the precipice and threatening to take a bunch of those publishers with it. I also suspect several series pop up with the intention of being ongoing monthlies, but initial sales demand otherwise. This is something I’ll have to pay attention to this year.
“3) We start seeing some books from Marvel in DC’s larger Black Label format.”
I mean, there’s a whole-ass publisher doing books exclusively in this format, and other companies occasionally try their hands at it too. Surprisingly, Marvel’s shied away from the format. I bet if they did, like, a short-run Garth Ennis Punisher mini like that, it’d sell like gangbusters. But then Marvel would put out a million more comics in that format right after seeing the first one make money, and, well, maybe we’d better leave enough alone.
“Happy new year!”
We’ll see!
demoncat_4 scratches these out (and I did just a tiny bit of editing for clarification, I hope that’s okay, demoncat)
“1 after managing to make the dc film verse start catching up with marvel kevin feige and james gunn will annouce a jla avengers crossover in the works to not waste time.”
The new DC Multimedia Extravaganza hasn’t really started yet, beyond the Creature Commandos cartoon, so Feige is probably not sweating the competition yet. (He’s got enough to sweat about, I’m imagining.) But things would have to get pretty dire before the two studios find themselves in a position to start “teaming up,” as it were. (Same with the Star Wars/Star Trek crossovers folks keep hoping for.)
Now, I’ve heard JLA/Avengers film rumors before, but…man, sure, I’d love to see it, but that’s not happening in what’s left of my lifetime.
2 dc will announce at last they will finally after other failed attempts rerelease the legendary swamp thing 88 where swamp thing meets jesus and let rick veitch get to write a new swamp thing book again.
You know, I just talked about this recently, and, whaddaya know, it was in response to a question from demoncat! Short version of what I said then…either we get it in sequence in a reprinting of Rick Veitch’s run on Swamp Thing (which DC just started doing last year), or they just go wild and do a “facsimile” edition with that Swampy cross cover and everything, Veitch supplying the script over the late Michael Zulli’s art.
No announcement on any of this, regardless, but I’m hoping to see this someday.
“3 del toro will annouce he will not only work with james gunn on the swamp thing film. but also if swamp thing does get a tv series the episode where swamp thing meets constantine.”
Nothing along these lines, demoncat, but I like the cut of your jib!
Brian F finds
“1) Marc Spector (Moon Knight) will be brought back to life.”
I even forgot he was dead. But hey, it’s comics, nobody stays dead except Uncle Ben (but I think even he came back at least once).
“2) No new Machine Man series”
I can’t believe Marvel refuses to acknowledge the demands of the people on this. But I have no idea what’s going on with DC’s supposed claim to ownership of the character, and if that’s holding anything up.
“3) Deadman will come back to existence following his Night Terrors ‘death'”
Well, Deadman turned up in an issue of Brave and the Bold but I’m unsure of the continuity status of that story. “Unsure of the Continuity Status” is like DC’s motto.
William Burns fires me up with
“1. Lots of ‘Donald Trump as superhero’ memes, about 50/50 serious and parodic.”
Well, you made me Google “Donald Trump as superhero” and I may never forgive you. I did find this story about an image Our Esteemed Leader put out there, and it’s the first time I’ve seen it, so if it went viral, it did so in the places where I’m not normally looking.
“2. The fading of the superhero movie moment with have negative effects on the sales of comic books.”
I mean, my sales are up, so it’s not really done anything to me. I think there’s enough superhero media out there that even the flops are getting seen plenty on streaming platforms and all the characters are still fresh in everyone’s minds. It’s the coming “ugh, superheroes aren’t cool anymore, that’s what Grandpa likes” pushback that’s gonna do the harm. You know, like what that did to Star Wars.
“3. Another Alan Moore comic book will be announced, from a company that has never published his work before.”
I’m gonna guess Moore would chew off his own beard before writing another comic book, but “never say never again,” as a Bond movie once told us.
Okay, I think I can finish wrapping up the predictions with Wednesday’s entry, and any final business I can do on Friday. Phew, I was afraid I was going to bleed over into February with this. Anyway, thanks for putting up with the delays in this series, and assuming an angry, elderly mob of Star Wars fans doesn’t chase me down, I should see you again in a couple of days!
No Omnibus, but the DC Finest Batman collections are printing post crisis Batman in order…filling gaps from and mooting my Caped Crusader and Dark Knight Detective collections.
Regarding the Amalgam omnibus I heard it was the printer’s fault, not DC’s, and so the printer had to eat the cost of the reprint.
There’s a reason why I do a final wrap-up post on these prediction posts!
Project: Cryptid being an ongoing title didn’t last very long. There were eleven issues published. The editor did leave open the possibility of restarting the series at a later date if the sales ended up being strong enough. I have doubts this will happen. I was the only person buying the series at my local comic store, and while that may not be a representative sample, I can’t see it doing well. A lot of internet retailers seem to have multiple copies still left available.
I worked at a printing plant in the 00s.Worked overtime to get 50 copies of a Kaplan adult ed book. Me and another guy, 16 hour shifts because the machines were slow as hell.
Thick book, colored pages every few pages. Due to ship downtown the final day, beating the competition.
Covers looked beautiful. We took him back to Chuck the cutter, he took 20 copies and cut them sideways.
The next night there was no more Chuck and the plant didn’t get the gig.
QUOTE: “Unsure of the Continuity Status” is like DC’s motto.
I’m totally stealing that.
I forgot about that LoSH appearance in the last JSA series. What a missed opportunity. It was always going to be iffy in terms of continuity, but at least they could have been drawn by Mikel Janin. Replacing him on the book was a big disappointment.
“I even forgot he was dead”.
I never knew he was dead!
” I mean, wither Motorhead?”
Surprised they didn’t get sued for that! (The band or their merch company).
I think the only one of those book really remembered is Barb Wire.
” this better be one of the covers”
Awesome!
“with DC’s supposed claim to ownership of the character”
I forgot about that B.S.!
““Unsure of the Continuity Status” is like DC’s motto”.
it REALLY is!
Damn, a few weeks late but that Diamond prediction…
Does anyone remember the Comics Greatest World semi-revival Project Black Sky? Crashed and burned, so I doubt there’s much desire to try again.
@ Wayne
Yikes! I feel for you (and Chuck.) Printing is such a high stress job! I’ve worked on the other side of it as a designer/production artist at several different companies. It always amazes me how many people don’t understand the “dead” in deadline. “Can’t you just push the deadline?” No, the company paid for this time on the press literally YEARS ago. Either the files get the printer on time or we all get to file for unemployment!
It always made me think of how stressed the 70’s EIC’s and Sol Brodsky’s production dept. at Marvel must have been whenever they had to run a reprint because (usually) an artist couldn’t hit their deadline.
@Wayne
To be fair, sometimes it was the writers who couldn’t hit their deadlines at Marvel which resulted in the reprint issues–at least I believe that was the case with Steve Gerber a few times.
““3. Another Alan Moore comic book will be announced, from a company that has never published his work before.””
Nothing new was announced, but Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic was published after how many years of promises? That’s got to count for something.
So close on the Diamond and DC Collections predictions! I’d like to think the massive rollout for DC Finest means they did, in fact, hirer more people for the department.
@ Sean
True, the writers sometimes caused delays as well. If I recall correctly Howe’s History of Marvel Comics mentions Gerber and/or other writers occasionally blowing the deadline. I can understand the artist being behind much better than the writer. Drawing a 17 page comic compared to writing/scripting one requires so much more time.
Both legions did appear last year!
Bendis legion popped up in Green Arrow.
OG Flavor popped up at the end of Johns JSA.
“Does anyone remember the Comics Greatest World semi-revival Project Black Sky?”
Ummm… no.