Batman 89 and Superman 78 comics coming from DC Comics Digital first than physical
 

DC
@DCComics
Return to iconic cinematic visions of Gotham and Metropolis in BATMAN '89 and SUPERMAN '78, out this July Clapper board https://bit.ly/3qiaNGR #DCDigitalFirst

https://i.imgur.com/jLl4Rw1.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/Fc1TSR5.jpg

Clark looks like he's trying to figure out if he left the stove on in that cover....

Glad to see DC/Warner finally gave this the green-light.

It just sucks that the Superman stories are set in between I and II. I mean, I get that Superman Returns and Superman III exist as (contradictory) follow-ups, and I love III, but they're not exactly popular. I'd love for there to be a story that follows the Salkinds' pitched third movie with Brainiac, Mxy and Supergirl.

That pitch was terrible from a different direction, though.

As a kid I was intrigued by it and it certainly would have been better or more faithful than "Richard Pryor vs. The World, Guest-Starring Superman", but it's still probably for the best that it never got made. It would've maybe been "less-bad" of a story but it wasn't "good", either.

I'unno. I'm over Reeve-era Superman. Might be intriguing to see them actually develop some comic-book elements into that universe, though, since the movies themselves never had the budget for it. But it could possibly turn out just as bad and hokey as when "Smallville" tried to do the same.

On board with these books if I remember to order them or find them. Not on board with digital.

here are some sketches for the batman one looks like its burton/tas looks



They are big pics hence the spoiler and I am sick of resizing pics because this forum is archaic.

Interesting they "borrowed" one of the Kenner Batman figures for that Bruce design.

Is one of those Jokers designed to look like Prince?

I think so

Will the Batman comic ignore the Joel Schumacher movies?

3rd and 4th movies will be ignored by both comics.

I'm sure the Schmacher films will get their own books eventually.

Yeah, that's definitely "Party Man"

I don't get it, what's the point in blending the '89 and The Animated Series versions?

These look fun. I'm down for some Keaton & Reeve Bats & Supes.

Feels too late to be all that exciting. The sweet spot for this was a decade ago. Especially since we are getting the movie version back now and don't need an 89' shaped carrot on a stick to chase.

Not to judge the book in and of itself. Could be great work from great creators. I'm just not intrigued.

This is pretty on the mark. I'm in for these for at least a few issues, but to be honest I got bored with Batman '66 after 4 issues. Then later on I bought the Omnibus and haven't been able to bring myself to even read it yet.

On another note entirely, isn't speaking volumes regarding where we are at with the hobby when the entire hobby is being carried by pure nostalgia releases at this point?

Batman '89
Superman '78
NECA Fred Wolf TMNT / 90's Movie
Hasbro Studio Series Transformers
MATTEL MOTU re-releases
Marvel Retro line in both the 6" and 3 3/4" formats
Sports cards are released with old design schemes and reprints in foil are prolific

I mean honestly the list goes on? And we are supporting it, which is fine if that's what consumers are looking for. But why isn't it fine?

It further draws the line that the hobby widely ends with us too.

Complicated issue, which to me comes down to a combination of "Telling new stories is Hard" and "People like Status Quo" with a hefty dose of Nostalgia Blanket.

It's not impossible to tell new stories, or even to move the plot forward, but in the late-90s and early-2000s, DC had a bad run of attempting to do both of those things with results that weren't always so great. So people start openly petitioning for things to "Go back to how they were Before", as sales start to slip when the New Stuff isn't grabbing the proper attention. So the publisher gives in to demand, sales spike upon the return of Hal Jordan or Barry Allen or Superman's old costume or the yellow oval on Batman's chest, and they run with that for a while. But eventually, you have to try and move things forward again but people remain resistant; they're happy to see what's familiar again, but when things start to change even a little bit, they get nervous. Sometimes the new stories are good, but sometimes they're bad, and that makes people even more skittish about things progressing in any appreciable fashion. So you're forever in this state of two steps forward, one step back, and eventually two MORE steps back and the whole dance starts again.

So when in the absence of any idea how to proceed, and with the audience at large being anxious about new ideas or story progression, the writers and publishers are all but forced to go back to the last time there was any sort of positive consensus about the characters. The last time there was NO divide in the audience and everyone more or less agreed, "Yeah, this is good", with only about a 1% margin of error.

For Superman and Batman, that becomes the Reeve and Keaton versions, respectively (and in my opinion, regrettably, but that is after all only My Opinion). We're also seeing it on the other side with Tobey's Spider-Man and all the people clamoring for more of That, 20 years after the fact. Same thing; A Thing comes out, it's almost universally acclaimed, and then New Things come out that are more divisive. There's more and more discord amongst the fans, and so they all retreat into the warm blanket of Nostalgia and "simpler times".

I get it. I don't particularly like it, but I understand it. I absolutely favor the Cavill Superman movies and the Bale/Affleck Batmans, but the fact is, nobody's ever going to be making any comics of those movies because the opinion on those movies is so split, with everyone on either side being so tribal about it. If they were to hypothetically make a comic book about, say, Affleck's Batman, or even a book set in the Schumacher Batman "universe", the arguments in the Comments sections of every news article would completely overshadow the project itself, like what we see any time a DC movie comes out, period. You'd have people who were excited, but also people shouting them down with "WHO even wants this? Blech!" And that's bad ink.

What they're trying to do with these nostalgia projects, is please the mythical "Everybody". Reeve Superman and Keaton Batman are the proverbial "sacred cows" for each of those characters; you're more or less not allowed to say they're anything less than great, and when in doubt, you can trot them out again anytime and people will unanimously cheer. They're a "safe" bet for any project. "If THIS doesn't make people happy, then nothing possibly can."

Mark my words, when sales on the IDW TMNT book dip below 3,000 copies, OR the book gets outright cancelled, they'll announce a "TMNT '88" comic book set in the Fred Wolf cartoon universe. It's absolutely going to happen at some point. It all depends on how desperate they get, and when.

I get it. I personally don't feel the same way most do about wallowing in nostalgia; I love to revisit the past but I don't necessarily want to live there, and I'm not of the opinion that what we had Then was in any way "Better" than what we have Now. Frankly, with regard to these two projects, I've written novels' worth of words about everything I think is wrong with Burton's Batman movies and the Reeve Superman flicks. I grew up with them, they're "Fine", but they're not sacrosanct to me the way they are to some and part of me even resents them a bit for the way people cling to them the same way they cling to FW TMNT, and never letting the characters move past that interpretation even decades after the fact, when objectively better things have come along.

BUT, at the end of the day, it's just ink. Like I said, I get it. And it doesn't hurt me in any way, it's not even a bad idea in and of itself, although like Aqua said, a better time probably would have been 10 or more years ago. But am I excited about either? Eh. Like IMJ said, if a collected edition comes out I might buy it.

DC is incentivizing digital over physical? AT&T really can't wait to stop publishing comics.

Not necessarily, could just be "covering all bases".

Allegedly, sales of digital comics went down and sales of physical comics went up, over the last year. Not sure how/why but that's apparently the story. So things are apparently more complicated than they may seem at a glance.

I know that DC has been counting their "young adult novels" as comic book sales. Which is dishonest.