5 Ways To Revitalize DC Comics
3.Stop Decompression
Maybe Brian Michael Bendis is to blame. The current trend of superhero storytelling is based around arcs of five to six issues. This started during the late 90s/early 2000s (BMB was a pioneer) and helped increase the popularity of trade paperbacks that are available in bookstores like Barnes and Noble.
Known as writing for the trade, stories that were once told in an issue or two became stretched or decompressed in order to fill several. It was great for trade sales, but it effectively reduced the amount of stories told about a character to about two six parters per year. And its only getting worse.
Writers like Brian Hickman are often derided as writing for the omnibus with his stories that last 24-36 issues. In many ways, 2015s Secret Wars was the culmination of a story he started in Fantastic Four five whole years prior. This may be the industry standard, but it causes problems.
Lets say you are a Wonder Woman fan in 2011. Then the New 52 happens. The entire history of the character is changed and she goes from being an Amazon shaped from clay, free from the influence of any man to just another love child of Zeus. Whether or not that decision completely derails the character is a topic best left to better writers - the point is if you dont LIKE that change, you will have to endure it for the next four years until the writing team changes in 2015.
Now, of course majority rules and if sales are good theres no reason to take creators off of titles because of some arbitrary time limit. There is no problem with one writer staying on a title for a hundred issues. The problem is one writer staying on for a hundred issues but only telling two or three actual stories. Take a look at silver age comics and youll find that more happens in three panels than in three whole issues of modern comics.
The knowledge that, if you dont like the current story arc, youre going to have to sit through it for months, if not years, causes a lot of fans to drop titles that they would otherwise be picking up. This is precisely what DC wants to avoid.