DC Comics 2015 Wishlist: 10 Things That Must Happen

By Chris Quicksilver /

5. Make More €˜All Ages€™ Books...

Let€™s face facts, geek-wads, we ain€™t getting any younger... Most of you reading this first discovered comic books and superheroes in your childhood and that is where superhero fiction works best. Today, there are a lot of €˜dark€™ comics out there, which is fine, until you realize that younger children aren€™t really reading comics anymore as a result... Comic books aren€™t the tobacco industry, publishers don€™t specialize in killing their customers, but the two are similar in that both aim to hook the clientele while they€™re still young... So, we€™re suggesting here that DC pitch a series of €˜All Ages€™ books that contain serious, dramatic subject matter and take place within the main continuity, but that don€™t feature extreme violence, sexualised content or too much €˜adult stuff€™. If, for example, you want to read Batman tracking down a serial killer, then that€™s fine - do it in the €˜older€™ version of the book, for Batman vs. The Riddler, put it in the €˜All Ages€™ book. If a couple of DC flagships (Justice League and Action Comics, for example) were newly pitched as All Ages books, it probably wouldn€™t affect existing readers at all, but it would also allow children to once again enjoy mainstream superhero comics. We want to stress here that this wouldn€™t involve a €˜dumbing down€™ of any storylines, just making them more accessible to younger readers by removing the more salacious content from selected books.