Tuesday, January 01, 2013

2013: The Year DC Comics Officially Becomes Parody-Proof

The other night I was enjoying Kelly Thompson's always-enjoyable "Drunk Cover Solicits in Three Sentences or Less", focusing on DC's solicitations for February of this year, and I noticed she pulled out the above gem.

It is, of course, the cover for Before Watchmen: Dollar Bill #1 (Apparently those Before Watchmen comics are selling well enough that they're going to keep making them, and giving every character named in the original their own comic at some point; Bubastis and Seymour should get their own one-shots before the Fall quarter).

It reminded me of this post Tom Spurgeon wrote in 2010, back when rumors of a Watchmen expansion project involving Darwyn Cooke started circulating, a joke proposal for a four-issue miniseries entitled Dollar Bill: Bank On It.

Weird how what was simply someone making fun of a ridiculous project for a serious publisher to even consider—by suggesting the most ridiculous direction possible—is, a few short years later, a serious reality.

Sadly, it looks like DC passed Spurgeon over in favor for Len Wein. Sadder still? An artist of Steve Rude's caliber is apparently so desperate for work that he has to sully his reputation by working on the most unsavory publishing initiative the Big Two have embarked upon in pretty much ever.

3 comments:

Andrew said...

Given Rude's public shaming of DC last year over not hiring him for any new projects, I'm a little surprised they gave him the job at all.

But yes, there are so many other things I'd rather see Rude drawing than an atrocious BW project. Like more Nexus or The Moth...

bad wolf said...

Well, for Marvel there was Quesada's statement (in 2005?) that combining Ultimate and 616 Universes would mean they were "officially out of ideas", which is pretty handy as a benchmark now that's they've actually done it.

JohnF said...

Wasn't Dollar Bill basically a hero for about 5 minutes? Plus he wasn't described as being particularly interesting, even by people who liked him.