DC Publishes Guide to Its Graphic Novel Backlist

By Calvin Reid

Looking to provide info to retailers, librarians, and consumers interested in its book-format comics, DC Comics is publishing the DC Entertainment Essential Graphic Novels and Chronology 2013, a 121-page reading guide and index to the publisher’s extensive backlist of collected and original graphic novels. The guide will be released this month to stores in print and digital versions and will be available via the DC Comics Web site.

DC executives John Cunningham and John Rood both cited the need to promote DC’s backlist to the comics shop market (also known as the direct market), which is more focused than ever on book-format comics, as well as to the general book trade. “We’ve never done this before and its way overdue,” Cunningham said. “It’s an imperative as our digital releases are bringing lapsed as well as longtime comics fans into stores.”

DC Entertainment Essential Graphic Novels and Chronology 2013 offers a detailed listing of the publisher’s 25 most acclaimed graphic novels (“The Essential 25”), including Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons and Batman Year One by Frank Miller and David Maazacchelli; the trade paperbacks collecting the recent New 52 relaunch; graphic novels from DC’s Vertigo imprint; and book series based on major characters such as Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman. There are also lists of DC’s children’s books and books from major DC authors like Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. The guide even contains a suggested-reading sequence for its graphic novels and short plot summaries for the major entries.

Compiling a backlist catalogue is routine for trade book publishers—but not so for most comics publishers. Cunningham pointed out the ever-growing importance of the book trade to comics publishing. “We follow every aspect of traditional book publishing,” he said, adding, “We have a library marketing specialist, we treat our collections as books, and we keep everything in print. This will really help consumers with our enormous backlist—now about 1,800 titles.”

Rood said that the guide will prove useful when Man of Steel, the new Superman film, is released this summer. “This is just us listening constantly to retailers that want to know, ‘Where do I start?’” he said. Cunningham added, “Booksellers and librarians have been clamoring for something like this. Our goal is to find as many avenues as we can to attract readers to our books.”

(Source: publishersweekly.com)

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Batman’s mythology getting new boost from DC

via AP News.

MATT MOORE
Published: Today

Batman’s transformative years are getting a few new twists.

DC Entertainment is going back into Bruce Wayne’s past to see how he began his transformation from wealthy socialite to the scourge of Gotham’s criminal underworld.

Key elements of the character’s history are staying the same - the murder of Wayne’s parents, for example - says Scott Snyder, the writer of “Batman” since its relaunch debuted in 2011.

“It’s not ‘let’s redo the origin,’” he said Monday. “It’s time for a new story showing how Batman became who he is in the New 52.”

Snyder said the decision grew out of the success of the first year-and-a-half of DC’s New 52, a sweeping reorganization of the publisher’s characters that saw many given new origins and costumes that blended those from their first appearances decades ago with contemporary changes.

Snyder said readers will see how the crime fighter found his calling and what challenges he faced when first donning the costume of the Dark Knight.

The augmented origin begins June in the pages of “Batman” in an 11-issue story called “The Year Zero” that is illustrated by Greg Capullo.

“We tried to preserve as much of Batman’s history as we could and keep what we could of this history intact,” Snyder said of the change. “It’s ‘The Zero Year,’ the one that no one has told the story of before. We see how Bruce became the Batman, built the cave, faced off with his first super villain.”

It’s not so much an origin story as it is a view into Batman’s formative years.

“We’re not going to take apart ‘Year One,’” Snyder said, referring to the Frank Miller-David Mazzucchelli four-issue arc that recounted how Wayne began to fight crime after years away.

Instead Snyder, an Eagle Award-winning writer whose other efforts for DC include “Swamp Thing” and “American Vampire,” said the “Zero Year” story will give readers new glimpses into the Bob Kane-created character who made his first appearance in the pages of “Detective Comics” No. 27 in May 1939.

“It’s time for a new story showing how Batman became who he is in the New 52,” said Snyder. “It builds up the mythology.”

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DC Comics makes the most of Superman’s 75th year

Brian Truitt, USA Today

On Tap for 2013: Busting loose in ‘Superman Unchained’ and meeting the Dark Knight in new ‘Batman/Superman”

Sleepless nights crafting the adventures of Batman have been commonplace for writer Scott Snyder.

He can expect more insomnia penning that other favorite character of his: Superman.

This year, which marks the 75^th anniversary of the Man of Steel, will celebrate the granddaddy of all superheroes in a number of ways. A new movie,Man of Steel, stars Henry Cavill as the cape-clad hero and arrives in theaters June 14. And DC Comics is putting some fresh eyes on the big, spit-curled guy standing for truth, justice and the American way.

Snyder teams with artist (and DC co-publisher) Jim Lee for an all-new Superman Unchained series beginning June 12, and that same month sees the debut of Batman/Superman by writer Greg Pak and artist Jae Lee that will show the earliest meeting between the company’s two iconic heroes.

“We’re all fans and we’ve all known this character for a long time,” Jim Lee says. “You have to fight your natural tendency to do what you know or what you’ve always thought the character to be.

“We’ve been pushing the creators to not be beholden to the past conceits and understandings” of Superman, he adds. “So we will speak to a new generation of readers.”

The newbies will get their first glimpse at Unchained in a special Superman-centric offering on Free Comic Book Day, May 4, with an adrenaline-filled, epic sequence featuring Superman busting loose and saving the day.

Lee says they’ll pull back “the camera” sometimes, “showing really how this small little figure, this human-shaped character, can literally move mountains,” and Snyder aims to focus on this superhero who has the power to shape the world however he wants it yet looks at humanity to be inspired himself.

“If I think for a second, ‘I’m working on Superman,’ you get chills and it becomes very, very intimidating when you think of all the amazing stories that have come before,” says Snyder, who also is doing backup stories in Unchained with artist Dustin Nguyen.

“The way to approach a character as iconic as him is you just come at it from a standpoint of what you love the most about the character, and then write a story that explores that, tear it down and build it back up.”

Like Snyder has done with his popular Batman book, Unchained also will explore the Man of Steel’s supporting characters and how they occupy his thoughts as he goes about the business of being Superman.

“I know conceptually why he admires Lois Lane, but then when you’re writing them and you feel the chemistry between them and it comes to life on the page, it’s always these little bursts of surprises that have been a joy to discover with him,” Snyder says.

“The energy we’re bringing to the story and that ‘Hey, we can add new stuff to the canon’ kind of attitude will serve us well,” Lee says.

Batman/Superman goes back to the beginning of their long relationship, with a young crime-fighting Dark Knight new on the Gotham City scene and the Man of Steel fresh off the Smallville farm and making a name for himself as a budding journalist — Clark Kent, of course — and fledgling working-class hero of the people.

Pak feels that Superman’s appeal as a cultural mainstay since 1938 is the same as what’s behind the popularity of Spider-Man, Harry Potter and the X-Men.

“They’re all about outsiders,” the writer says. “As you grow up, you try to find your place in the world and you don’t belong and you struggle, and that’s the story of our lives, at least our adolescence.

“When you combine that with somebody who chooses to help, that becomes very powerful.”

That he always sticks up for the underdog is another attractive quality to Pak.

“We want to be that strong and do the right thing and rise to the occasion. Superman gives us that kind of hope,” he says. “And then also he can smash whatever he wants to smash and he can set things on fire with his eyes. That’s pretty cool.”

Jae Lee takes issue with anybody who deems Superman “the ultimate boy scout” or, even worse, boring.

“When you’re young and you have a character like that you can aspire to,” he says, “if you’re ever in a position where you end up having any kind of power but you live up to those ideals, what a wonderful world this place would be.”

source: USA Today

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