Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by retailer Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in Yellow Springs, Ohio.  This week, Bennett talks about all-ages and upcoming revived comics material:

Just to prove I can leave nothing alone I closed last week’s column with a quote from Dan Didio where he said in essence that DC would “like” to have a presence at Wal-Mart and similar outlets like Marvel has, though from the speed with which this task is being tackled I imagine it’s in the same way DC would like their comics to have a stronger online presence (which I interpret to mean “someday, when we get around to it, if it doesn’t cost too much”).

Marvel has proven that to get into Wal-Mart you have to adhere to Wal-Mart standards, which is why Spider-Man Magazine* is full of Marvel Adventures stories and older reprints and not Marvel Zombies.  So if DC is actually serious, they’re really going to have to look at the comics they publish, like Teen Titans #60 which features Robin repeatedly being bloodied (proper red blood, not the black comic book variety) and a female character being called a “whore.”

The only all-age material they produce on a regular basis is the Johnny DC line, and while I’d like to see Super Friends, Billy Batson and The Power of the Shazam and upcoming Supergirl series in a magazine geared towards kids (I’ve written this before but if Time-Warner has Sports Illustrated for Kids and Mad Magazine for Kids, why not Action for Kids?), they skew towards the youngest readers.  Secondary reprints would give DC another sound reason to produce all-ages, done-in-one stories featuring Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, etc.

Apropos of nothing, knowing DC comics are published all over the world I’ve begun to wonder how contemporary superhero material has affected overseas sales, seeing as how they’ve been engineered to appeal to the narrowest possible American audience.  The continued stories, the need to read dozens of different titles to comprehend an “event,” not to mention the profanity, violence, sex and blasphemy (the Teen Titans features Kid Devil, a character who sold his soul to the devil; I can’t imagine that going over well in Malaysia where they changed the title of the Hellboy movie to Super Sapiens so as not to offend any of the country's many religions).

I’ve been reading the reports from Chicago where apparently the licensed title was king.  I’m so old I remember a time when creators actually wanted to invent their own characters, but apparently the thinking now is a licensed title is a safer choice than an original idea, no matter how obscure.  The perfect example of this mindset being Devils Due acquiring the rights to The Corps, the poor man’s G.I. Joe, a toy line with such a low profile one of the upcoming comics’ creators had never heard of it.

Licensed titles are of course what Dynamite is about.  They had two big announcements about acquisitions, the first being The Phantom, one of my favorite comic strip characters that’s never had much success in the direct sales market.  While I agree he could use some tweaking if he’s going to appeal to this audience, taking the one thing making him unique (a jungle setting) might be going too far, though I have to admit if he’s ever going to get any respect from fans he’s just got to lose those striped Underoos.

Once again Judge Dredd will try to “break the States” in spite of his numerous previous failures (I count three but might have forgotten one).  With his baggage of badass hardness, bitter black humor and no hope future, I’d ordinarily say he’s unlikely to appeal to a sufficiently large American audience, but given what’s currently running on Adult Swim, maybe his time has finally come.

But Dynamite isn’t done with us; according to ICv2, they plan to “begin releasing monthly 144- to 200-page full-color trade paperback collections of the Rebellion material three to four months after launching the first series” (see “Dynamite Gets Rebellion, Phantom”).  That seems like kind of a lot, especially given I’m sure most of you out there still have loads of unsold Judge Dredd trade paperbacks clogging your shelves

Only one revival announced in Chicago really interested me, though it didn’t make the usual suspect comic book news Websites; Invisible Scarlet O’Neil, the super powered star of a long running but unfortunately forgotten comic strip.  Samples of both the original comic strip and the upcoming graphic novel can be seen at the Invisible Scarlet O’Neil Website.

Finally there’s the breaking news about Kodansha publishing in the States (see “Kodansha Heading Stateside”).  Considering what’s going on with Tokyopop, now doesn’t seem like a particularly auspicious time to start selling manga in America.  There’s too many unknown variables (what titles, how many, how will this affect their relationships with American publishers, etc.) for me to even hazard a guess as to what and how they’ll do.  But one thing is certain; they have deep pockets and if they’re willing to play the long game things are about to get interesting.

* I stopped by Borders today and found copies of Spider-Man Magazine #1. Yes, Marvel has finally decided after a half dozen one-shots to throw caution to the winds and make it a regular bimonthly title.  It’s the same package of all-ages reprints and activities, but I did notice with interest the full page ad for the Marvel Comics Website trumpeting that it’s a cool place to read comics, watch cartoons, etc.

The opinions expressed in this Talk Back column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.