ComicBitsOnline.com

The announcement came out of the blue [well,San Diego Comic Con actually]:DC announced that it now had the Archie Comics “MLJ” heroes such as the Black Hood,Shield and so on. The characters were going to initially appear in The Brave & The Bold comic -hence the above illo featuring Batman.

I’ve had a few hundred emails since and Yahoo groups dedicated to these much loved characters have seen a virtual hurricane of activity asking “What?” “Who?” “When?” And more specifically:”Why the hell didn’t you tell us this was happening?!”

Well,for one thing,although I do heavily promote Archie on CBO as well as elsewhere,I am NOT privvy to company info.  I rely on what Archie tells me.

As it stands what I know is this:at San Diego,Dan Didio announced that it had “licenced” [?] the MLJ characters from the Golden Age -Silver Age also though Joe Simon copyright excludes the use of Lancelot Strong and The Fly [in the illo above rather deceptively has the Fly in it–I’m told DC had not realised that Fly and Strong were copyrighted to Joe Simon,pointing to a lack of knowledge on comic book history].

The characters will appear in The Brave & The Bold and then spread out into the DC universe,guesting in other books and so on. 

This is rather odd.  If the characters are licenced then when a trade paperback of B&B or JLA or whatever featuring the characters is put together a NEW licence would be needed. Very odd.  Not how DCs owners work normally.

 J. Michael Straczynski,having now left Marvel after years of writing the same old story again and again and having written The Twelve which showed his “love” of these characters probably never existed in the first place,is set to sort through the 1940s MLJ characters to see which he wants to use. 

Straczynski,apparently,”loved” these characters as a kid “but needs to do more research on them”. Yeah,obviously a ‘major’ fan.  And echoing the usual bilge,when asked by Newsarama about his move from Marvel to DC,JMS stated:

“I think the DC universe is a bit lighter and more polished in some respects, but that’s neither better nor worse than being grittier or darker, it’s mainly a philosophical thing. Growing up, I always enjoyed Marvel, but I was a massive DC fan particularly in terms of Batman, Superman and the core DC characters. I have one of the biggest collections of Superman stuff on the Western seaboard.”

Oh. Right. “..a bit lighter and more polished” –sorry,are we talking about THE DC comics?! But didn’t JMS say how he was the “biggest Marvel” fan when he signed to them?

And didn’t he “love” those Marvel characters as a kid as well?

Sorry,but JMS was brilliant -BRILLIANT- when it came to Babylon 5 but comics,well,he has run out of ideas.  Having chanced The Twelve I’ll not be chancing his take on the MLJ characters.  I’ll leave that up to the hardcore “JMS can do nothing wrong” mob.

A major problem has been that DC made all the announcements and rumours have filtered through of DC and Didio stating at San Diego that they “own” the characters.  Archie is silent and will not make a PR statement on the matter.

I’ve had several mails from people saying they have heard Archie may sell out completely to DC next year.  This is RUBBISH.  There is no commercial sense in doing that and getting rid of a much loved family business.  However,the Archie silence is fuelling the rumours which could harm the company in a number of ways.

I cannot see the sense in remaining silent.  A simple statement such as follows would scotch ALL rumours:

“Archie Comics has licenced its adventure characters [referred to generally as the “MLJ heroes”] to DC comics for a specified period.  Archie still owns all copyright on these characters. News on how DC will use these characters will be released by DC.”

So,watch this space as we try to sort out what the rumour mill is grinding up!