I miss conventions. Last week’s editorial talked about the experiences of people at one of the first truly big cons since the Dark Times© began, and I’m personally not ready for that, so for now I’ll still get something close to my fix from the virtual experience.
This weekend I “attended” DC’s FanDome, a celebration of all things DC, and it was, for me, a mixed bag. You see, I am a huge fan of DC Comics, but a big-to-middling fan of DC Entertainment. What that means is I’m into comics in a really big way, but not so much into all the other stuff DC does. Sure, I watch some of the TV shows, and usually see the movies on the big screen (In all fairness, I see one to three movies a week on the big screen), but a lot of that stuff isn’t my bag.
For years, I watched everything that came from any comics property, because I felt if I didn’t, there was a chance we wouldn’t get any more. But now that comics are everywhere, I realize I can be more discerning, I can watch and listen to what I actually like, because comics aren’t going anywhere in other media. And FanDome is a good example of that. The breakdown of segments in the event is as follows:
- TV (live action and animated, streaming and broadcast): 21
- Movies (theatrical and direct-to-home): 10
- Comics: 8
- Video games: 3
- Other (podcasts, toys, products, character spotlights): 6
Comics as an IP mill isn’t anything new. Nobody thought, back in the Golden Age, that comics would make you any real money, hence a lot of the bad deals those creators made. And the first big IP to hop to another medium?
Superman, whose radio show debuted in 1940. Yes, that’s two years after Superman was created, so don’t let anyone say that the MCU and the fact that comics are being written to be sold to other media is something that came about in the past 20 years, though we as an industry do tend to have short memories.
That’s a lot of rambling to say that a lot of what FanDome was isn’t for me. I love the con experience of interacting with creators. Of seeing friends I only see at cons. Of getting a couple new sketches for my Batman sketchbook. And of digging for dollar bin gold. And occasionally choosing a panel I think looks interesting. Maybe I’m old (OK, I’m definitely old), but these virtual events aren’t for me.
Still, there was some fun to be had. Comedian Flula Borg talking about his roles in The Suicide Squad and the new HBO Max Aquaman cartoon was a delight. Camrus Johnson, who plays Luke Fox/Batwing on The CW’s Batwoman, seemed genuinely jazzed to have written his first comic story in a segment about Batwing. Various people in Hollywood talking about the importance of Wonder Woman for her 80th anniversary was cool in a quick montage sort of way. And the segment where former Arrow star Echo Kellum talked with Reginald Hudlin and Denys Cowan about the future of Milestone Media was very cool. Even if everything here wasn’t for me, there were still some nuggets that made the time I spent worth it.
And there were plenty of announcements, so for those of you who didn’t dive into FanDome, here’s a lightning round of high (and low) lights:
- Milestone’s return will continue with the launch of its fourth title, Blood Syndicate.
- The first Milestone animated movie is in the works, with a script by rising star Brandon Thomas, who is writing Hardware Season One and Aquaman: The Becoming.
- Gene Luen Yang has a new 12-issue maxiseries starring his new character, the Monkey Prince, in the works with artist Bernard Chang. Any new GLY is great news.
- The new animated series Batman: Caped Crusader seems interesting, with it coming from Bruce Timm and James Tucker, but I need to hear some more; the talk of it being more mature than the original Batman: The Animated Series can mean good stuff, but we’ve all seen what “mature” can translate to.
- DMZ is getting a TV show? Boy, I thought Brian Wood and all his properties were sort of persona non grata.
- The Naomi TV show looks pretty neat.
- That trailer for the Flash movie is really a “Hey, Michael Keaton is back as Batman!” trailer. And I’m OK with that.
- Last year’s FanDome featured the debut of the first trailer of Matt Reeves’ upcoming film, The Batman, so it’s not surprising that this year’s climaxed with the debut of the second trailer. I am still mulling over how I feel about it, but I figure you’ll hear some about that in this week’s BatChat column. (That’s what we call a tease, folks.)
That’s it. Oh, and they just stealth-dropped episodes 1 and 2 of Young Justice: Phantoms, the new season of that show, on HBO Max.
Wait, what? Sorry, everybody, cutting this short, because I need to go to there! Have fun, and I look forward to seeing you all at cons in the hopefully not too distant future.
Matt Lazorwitz read his first comic at the age of five. It was Who's Who in the DC Universe #2, featuring characters whose names begin with B, which explains so much about his Batman obsession. He writes about comics he loves, and co-hosts the creator interview podcast WMQ&A with Dan Grote.
