Smallville Season 11 #15

[superfangirl1]

Barbara crushing on superman.










First blood meeting with red sunlight gloves.

Comments

[q99]

Dan's pretty clearly running things based on personal preference rather than business. If he likes a character, they'll continue on even as their book drops well sub-20k.

If not, a run largely in the 30s and 20s is a sign only a minority likes them and they shouldn't be used, period.

[mrstatham]

Bang on. He's careful to avoid obvious favouritism, which is why his own OMAC book promptly disappeared (although I was actually a bit depressed that one got cancelled), and the same will likely happen if Phantom Stranger isn't popular enough, but.. Absolutely. I think they keep some titles on a lifeline because they consider them necessary, but personal preference definitely comes into play at times.

[q99]

And a lot of the ones he says are the reasons we can't have the other versions... aren't doing *that* much better and had the advantage of a *massive* relaunch.

I think the best Wally book still well outsold Barry's new stuff, Cassandra is without a doubt the best selling Batgirl of all time, Wonder Woman has had better sales than the reboot (either Odyssey or the new one) within the past decade, etc..

[mrstatham]

As always, going to have to disagree with thoughts on Wonder Woman, since I feel that is a step up in quality from the JMS/Simone/Picoult/Heinberg run, and that's kind of a separate argument from the legacy characters. Outside of her origin, I also don't feel Diana's personality has changed massively - at least in her own title.

[q99]

Regardless of thoughts on quality, I'm just pointing out the sales argument.

In the last 10 years, the best selling WW books are the start of the Heinberg run and the end of the Rucka run.

[mrstatham]

Gotcha, but that's kind-of not entirely to do with characters - everything, by and large, sold better around five to six years ago. Everything's taken a bit of a plunge, in the past few years; Marvel and DC make a big deal of a book cracking 100K.

[q99]

Those were some of the best selling books of the time, too. In their respective times, the aforementioned WW did better next to it's peers than the current WW.

Another example would be, say, Blue Beetle. I love Jaime, but his book sold something like half of the Robin/Spoiler one shot, let alone the Batgirl run.

[msrobin]

The sad part is that sometimes, he'll fixate on a good character who'll be badly handled. Barry Allen comes to mind. So does Jaime Reyes in his current book.

It's obvious that DC's brain trust conceived this reboot as a reboot by them for them.

[q99]

Yesss. Even when they like a character, they have a few default things they do to them. Make them the 'one true X,' destroy their relationships with supporting cast, and retcon in an angstier past.