Okay, it's time for another session of Tales from the Ashcan, where I give my opinion, and you're stuck with it.  Yay.  Today, I'm going to play David and pick on the Goliath that is DCPorntoonsComics.  I'm really not inclined to be nice about it.

Oh and warning: there will be spoilers.

Flat out: long before I read manga, I was a DC fan.  A Batman fan (gee, what a surprise), I had my own cape that my grandmother made for me and that I always wore (and yes, there are probably blackmail-worthy pictures somewhere in my mother's house.)  As any kid did (especially any kid in the 70s – yes, I went there), I made up my own stories about superheroes and villains, about righting wrongs, and while I think it was manga and anime that gave me the push to start actually writing stories down, it's undeniable that it was those stories that gave me the impetus.  If one could be crass, it was a great way to keep that kid hooked, so that instead of just receiving comics in the 70s, now in the 80s, he was buying comics, and in the 90s buying comics – and possibly buying them for his kids (I don't have kids, but I wasn't the only person who grew up in the 70s and had kids later on in life) and in th 00s, and….

Well, here we are, forty years later.  There's obviously a new generation of children, one that doesn't have just DCComics and Superfriends to grow up on.  There's Marvel (just like there was back then), and there's also be a slew of other choices that have come and gone between then: Atari and the rise of videogames, independent comics companies, the internet, web animation, webcomics.  Hundreds of thousands of choices to compete with against DC.

But in those years, DC has adapted.  The Tim Burton-originated Batman series helped erase the stigma some felt about Adam West's take on the character; the current Christopher Nolan take has erased even the bad parts about the Burton series.  Adam West was once considered the seminal Caped Crusader, now someone who has never even appeared in the costume himself – voice actor Kevin Conroy – is now considered the epitome of the Goddamned Batman.  The term itself is a sign of how much things have changed in four decades.

It's also a sign of how much has changed that isn't good.

By now, you've probably heard the news: how the passionately emotional Starfire went from cute giggly girl (comics or Teen Titans anime versions) to a brainless, emotionless blow-up doll.  Catwoman hasn't fared so well, either, nor have many of the other heroes and villiains changed: Wonder Woman's new outfit gets a myriad of responses, while Wonder Girl's background has been changed, inexplicably to that of a master thief.  Harley Quinn has gone from a well-meaning abused-by-Joker antihero to a punk badgirl.  Joker himself has yet to be scene, but the hints of his face being carved off at the end of Detective Comics #1 do not sound promising.  Two-Face is now more reminiscent of the Hulk or Bane than a tragic villain.  The original Green Lantern, Alan Scott, was unceremoniously killed off.  And in a less sensational but no less critical move, DC has controversially done away with a very iconic character: Barbara Gordon is back as Batgirl, having not only caused the existence of Cassandra Cain (the second Batgirl) into question, but to have completely obliterated Babs' years as Oracle, a talented hacker for good as well as a role model for disabled people everywhere.

The results have been less than overwhelming (or, to use a joke from the TV version of Young Justice, they're not even "whelming.")  Seven-year-old fans of Starfire have not reacted well.  Comic artists picked up on that, as well.  In some cases, the offending scene was flipped in gender and shown how bad it really is regardless, as depicted here and here.  One fan went so far as to write an "anti-parody" (warning: 18+ age gate), considering the original version to be the satire.  Meanwhile, the Catwoman bit has also been ruthlessly parodied, as well as here.  The fallout has even caused several staffers to leave DC, one quite notably.

So, WTF happened?  I could sit here all day and just thump on reasons: that they wanted to "fine tune" their audience, that the lunatics are in charge of the asylum (a maxim of entertainment is that one should never leave pure fanboys in charge of a business, or else they'll run it into the ground), that they're just pandering to themselves.  But…this whole thing was about opening comics to a new generation, to increase readership, to have a good handoff as comics slowly move from print to digital (remember that DC's digital offerings will be exclusive to Amazon's upcoming Kindle Fire tablet.)  So what happened?

my thoughts: the adults running DC now have forgotten what it's like to be the kid running around as Batman or Superman or Wonderwoman, and are writing for adults.  It's a wrongheaded decision.  Hasbro has found a way to market My Little Pony to both children and adults; why can't DC?  Marvel, especially now under Disney's auspices, has done the same.  Why not DC?  Two million kids watched Starfire's anime incarnation; those people will only know that version of the character, not the "space stripper" she's become now.  To people who watched Justice League Unlimited, John Stewart is Green Lantern; who the hell is Hal Jordan? – hell, Kyle Raner and Guy Gardner have better notability now than Jordan does…yet it's Jordan now in the lead…or rather Sinestro, just as inexplicably.

People writing for all audiences have forgotten how to write for the kids and have alienated both them and their parents, leaving a "purer", but smaller audience; one that will eventually die off or fade away.  Yes, you can make as much money selling one copy of a comic for $3 as you can three copies for $1, but losing one reader and only making $2 hurts a lot less than losing that one reader.  But that is what's happening.

I'm not going to plead and implore DC to change its ways; as a comic creator myself they have the right to stick to their guns and continue the path they've gone on, one they've gone down before (don't believe me?  in the 80s, Halo was a perky teenage hero that was a team regular and one of my favorites; they've now changed her to a sullen, forgotten one that has popped up only twice in the last fifteen years.)  But the equation has changed, and DC has forgotten that.  Now, they have the right to write what they want…but I have the choice to go elsewhere.  And so has everyone else.

Quo vadis, DC?  Pedes versus sepulchrum.
(Where are you going, DC?  Walking towards the grave, it seems.)