This is a letter I sent to DC Comics and several others in the industry. I doubt I will ever hear back from it but I felt it was time to voice my concerns. Enjoy.

Monday, November 30, 2009


Growing up one of my earliest memories was the way my room was decorated. The curtains, bedding and wallpaper were all DC heroes. Superman, Batman, Robin, Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel all looked down at me each day as I grew up. This was probably the subliminal beginnings of me being a life long fan of DC characters.

Being from a small town there was no access to a large selection of what to read, but with luck a convenience store in town carried Batman monthly. Not knowing how the publication cycle worked, I would go down every couple of weeks and look for the latest Batman issue. It wasn't until 1993 that I moved to a large city for university, complete with comic book stores. I immediately started a file, collecting anything that involved Batman or his cast of characters. During this time the writing was fantastic, from Knightfall through Legacy, Contagion and beyond. I discovered great writers like Peter David (Aquaman), Grant Morrison (JLA) and Chuck Dixon (Nightwing) to just mention the strongest memories.

I took a brief hiatus from comic collecting, only to find a girlfriend who enjoyed the culture as much as I do. Upon returning I asked what I missed that was worth going back and getting in trade form. The first words I heard were Brian Michael Bendis. Being a life long DC fan, I took it slow and picked up his Daredevil series. I also picked up a personal high amount of DC titles to dive right back in where I left off. Jeff Loeb amazed me with his Hush and Superman/Batman stories and it was nice to see Chuck Dixon return for the occasional story arc.

I found Nightwing floundering as a title and more importantly, as a character. Oliver Queen and Hal Jordan led a parade of formerly dead characters who were featured in titles again. Around the time of Loeb's departure I found solace in very few DC titles, and yet hung on to some for far too long out of sentimental reasons. I am not giving him all of the credit, his Marvel titles are not very good either but that seems to be around the time that things really got bad at DC. I cannot recall a well written DC story, save for Identity Crisis, off the top of my head for the last 5 years. A third straight weekly series with poor writing made me bitter that I had even started such an endeavor, and the "big three" were at an all time low for me. I dropped Action Comics, Superman, Wonder Woman, Justice League, Teen Titans, Titans, Outsiders and many, many others due to poor writing and absolutely no continuity between titles.

The final straw for me was the horrible combination of Batman RIP, Final Crisis and Blackest Night. At some point during my hiatus, Mr. Morrison lost his touch as a storyteller. RIP was probably my biggest disappointment as far as Batman storytelling goes. Final Crisis was so out of sequence and forced you to buy so many alternate titles that I became angered, far before the death of Bruce Wayne. And now, many years after the zombie movement took off everywhere else, we have Blackest Night. I attempted to give Blackest Night a fair chance, but it is nothing but shock tactics each month. Also once again, you need to buy almost every major DC title to keep up with this event. Your crew of solid writers has dwindled down to Bill Willingham and Geoff Johns, who has now become hit and miss. Those two men cannot carry an entire comic book franchise. I don't know what happened with Chuck Dixon, but it is a far bigger loss to DC Comics.

During all of my frustrations with DC, I steadily picked up more and more Marvel titles. Led by Bendis, David, Fraction, Kyle, Yost, Kirkman, Brubaker and Millar the steady stream of great writing has me picking up Marvel titles first each week to read. They seem to put more thought and effort in to each title and event to make sure everything unfolds for the reader nicely. Yes they have had some issues with things releasing on time, but nothing compares to All-Star Batman and Robin for lateness so that argument is lost. When Marvel unveiled Secret Invasion and showed how they had laid the groundwork for it for over 5 years I was simply blown away. All of their major events unfold seamlessly into one another and they take the time to actually develop characters into people who you can love, or hate.

I feel that the only way that I can make a statement as a fan and consumer is to stop purchasing DC Comics material until such time that it will be worth my time and money again.

Best of Luck,
Paul Konasavage

If you're not enjoying the DC line, that's fine to let them know.

I don't find this to be true, however. Yes, there's a lot of books out there with the "Blackest Night" banner, but I haven't found any of the crossovers outside the GL books to be necessary to getting the main story. Heck, one slight criticism I heard about the first four issues of BL was how little they delved into the War of Light and the various Lantern Corps. It may well be possible to read BL without reading the GL books, though I don't see why someone would go about it that way since the event is an outgrowth of those books.

I have just been reading Blackest Night, Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps.
I find that really since it WAS a Green Lantern story that spawned out of control, the only two that are actually relevant are Blackest Night AND Green Lantern.
And I can even say you really don't need Green Lantern to understand the story. Every other title was written in a way that they DO NOT add to the actual story so you miss nothing.
Geoff has also had this planned for a while so its kind of unfair to make it sound like they are jumping on a bandwagon now (meanwhile Marvel is kind of doing the same thing with Necrosha).
I really think we can't judge BN until the story has ended. Then and only then will you see what the outcome will be. This "Shock value" may not be what you think it is. Plus it IS supposed to be a horror story and horror stories are shocking.
If you are buying less and are not satisfied with the stories, that's cool. Tell them. I still think that DC has amazing stories being told in light of some of the problems you have had with them.
I actually feel the opposite myself.
Marvel has lost me big time with all the #### they have been pulling.
If I want to be depressed I will pick up a Marvel comic nowadays.

I disagree with this. If you missed Green Lantern #48, you would have no idea how all those Rainbow Lanterns got together. I opened up Blackest Night #5 and actually had to put it down and read GL 48 first. I would say that GL and GLCorps are far more integral to Blackest Night than most of the Final Crisis crossovers were to Final Crisis (Superman Beyond really being the only two issues you actually needed).

I opened up my issue of GL #48, and it said 'prior to BN #6' (or something to that effect), so I read BN #5 first, and was a little confused, and then read GL #48, so it made a little sense.

Overall, though, I am more impressed with Blackest Night so far than I was with Secret Invasion. And the reason is simply that I'm not 100% sure how the White Light is going to pull it out in the end. It seems like everytime they get the upper hand, the Black Lanterns are able to overcome.

With Secret Invasion, as soon as Nick Fury showed up, you knew the Skrulls were skrued. That, and I am really liking Blackest Night artwork much more than I did with Secret Invasion.

But you did not miss anything if you did not read issue 48 of Green Lantern.

Hal left with the Indigo Lantern an issue earlier to find a bearer of each color of the emotional spectrum and came back with the other colored Lanterns in another issue.
The only thing you missed is them getting together (which in of itself was not very exciting) and reading some funny lines by Larfleeze. It really did not mess the story up at all.
However, Geoff Johns has gone on record BEFORE Blackest Night even began that if someone wants to get the most out of Blackest Night, they should read BN and GL.
Not exactly a HUGE list of tie ins that are integral to the storyline.
NONE of the other stories (Superman, Titans, Batman, etc.) had to be read to understand what's going on in the core story to BN.
Do they offer a wider birth of whats happening across the entire DC Universe? Yes. But they are not necessary reads.

You're not reading the right DC stuff... Check out Secret Six, Justice Society, Booster Gold, Red Robin, and blackest Night are my cup of Joe!!!

Shorter OP - Marvel good, DC bad.

Can we get a moratorium on message board "open letters"?

Yeah, it's not as if Blackest Night had the groundwork laid out as far back as 2004, when Green Lantern Rebirth debuted...

Exactly. The prophesy, the emotional spectrum, among other plot points have been laid out for as long as the new series has been around some of it with Rebirth and even some of it further back with Alan Moore's GLC short stories.
That's the only issue I had with making BN a DC event as opposed to just keeping it within Green Lantern. Those who did not follow GL can't appreciate the groundwork laid out and how all of this came about.

I think Dan DiDio seriously needs to go. Since he came to DC all of my favorite characters have either been killed, seriously injured, pushed to the side or all of the above. I also do not like the fact that he has brought back his childhood heroes at the expense of mine.

I agree 100% on the Grant Morrison statement. Morrison used to be a good writer. I loved his JLA stuff, but his current work sucks. R.I.P., Final Crisis and his recent Batman stories seem like the writing of someone who belongs in Arkham Asylum. He has been given too much creative freedom with no boundaries by DC and the fanboys who see him as a writing god are blinded by his previous excellent stories. Morrison lost his touch awhile ago and those loyalists just refuse to believe it.

Hal Jordan and Barry Allen always bored the hell out of me and they still do. They were killed off for a reason and died heroic deaths. They were brought back because the inner fanboys of DiDio and the other writers at DC wanted their childhood heroes back and their rebirths just cheapened their death's. Kyle Rayner is my Green Lantern, Wally West is my Flash and Connor Hawke is my Green Arrow. Kyle was depowered, kicked to the side and possibly killed to make Hal look like a better Green Lantern after Kyle had surpassed him. Wally is starting to get pushed to the side in favor of Barry after he reached new levels his previous mentor never dreamed of. Connor was almost killed, put in a coma, had his DNA mixed with Plastic Man's and after he woke up completely "forgot" how to shoot a bow in order to make Ollie the only Green Arrow. That doesn't even cover my other favorite characters they have killed since DiDio took over, so I think that it is past time that he leaves.

I actually enjoy Blackest Night so far, so I have to disagree with you there. I read more DC than Marvel, but I think it would be a mistake to completely jump ship. Marvel isn't all it is cracked up to be either. I thought Secret Invasion started out strong, but was pretty weak towards the end. There are still some good titles at DC that are worth reading. Since you are not into Blackest Night I won't mention the Green Lantern books, but titles like Secret Six, Red Robin, Booster Gold and Adventure Comics are good books. I am a huge Batman fan and while I do still collect most of the Bat-titles none of them have really impressed me in awhile.

my problem is with both companies.
the price tag. what the bajeezus is going on with dark avengers annual being $4.99
same with anything under the blackest night banner. they all shot up a dollar for the same amount of pages just because its a blackest night story. i dont want to quit any of the title i read from either company but you have to be a doctor to buy all the titles i would like to read.

Got any examples on the Blackest Night prices? Every spinoff mini has been 32 pages for $2.99. Every crossover I've read has been $2.99 for the books that were $2.99 previously. There are some $3.99 books, but those are the ones that had been $3.99 for months now because of co-features (Booster Gold, Teen Titans, Doom Patrol).

OTOH, your next issue of Weird Western Tales is going to cost five times more when it crosses over into Blackest Night, I'll give you that...

I didn't even read the other comments on this post as I want to comment on your letter and not hear the oppinions of others as they are often less than objective. I thought your letter was well thought out and expressed your oppinions very well. You are simply a fan who is demanding he gets what he pays for, and since cost of comics keeps going up, there should be no reason why the quality is going down. Good luck to you and hopefully you get a response.

Since somone is making a comment about Blackest Night and saying that they don't like makes me sad. Shock factor is what comics need to make them exciting. Don't get me wrong in anyway, just about everyone says that Final Crisis was horrible. The biggest suggestion I would say is pick up what you really want and then ask other readers what they liked and then maybe pick it up in trade.

People have suggested to me a couple of things and then when my comic store is having a sale on TPBs that is when I will try and get some of those. Everyone was saying Fables and Y: The Last Man were really good and I picked them up and loved them and completely hooked. They even said that War of Kings was good and the Hardcover of that came out as a whole and I loved it. Just remember that everyone has different taste.

What Marvel is doing correctly is having a big story going on with Dark Reign so that it isn't its own series that has crossovers with other ongoing titles that you don't get but have to to get the story. Yes, I am not going to question that Bendis is a good writer with his work on the Marvel books, but what his problem is is that he has no idea how to end a story. For example, Secret Invasion was well written but a waste of money on the way it ended. It should have been a story of its own in the Thunderbolts.

Overall, Marvel has better writing at the moment, but DC has better characters. Yes, Daredevil, Hulk, Howard the Duck and Aquaman (these were the ones that I could think of off the top of my head) are some of the worst characters that both companies have come up with. Gail Simone needs to stop writing Wonder Woman and Marvel needs to stop with all of these crossover stories. For a long time Bendis was the worst writer in my book and then Grant Morrison took that spot with Final Crisis and Batman: RIP. There are some ongoing series that are great (Thunderbolts, Booster Gold, X-Force, Cable, Deadpool, and all of Green Lantern/Corps) to name a few, but in the long run there are more bad ones (One More Day, Final Crisis, Secret Invasion, Civil War, Wonder Woman, Justice League, Batman:RIP)then good.

All in all there is one simple solution to the problem, get rid of Didio and Joe Q.