dragonbat2006

This is adapted from a PM I sent to my co-mod on a Nightwing board after he voiced a few concerns I share about the possible direction for book and character after Forever Evil wraps. As I started typing, I realized I had a lot of feels about DC in general and why I'm fast becoming a Daredevil fangirl over at Marvel.

I don't think I'll ever abandon Batfic, but I'm coming closer than I ever thought I would to dropping away from current DC...



I was talking to a friend recently. Not so much about NW but about DC in general. For the longest time, DC has been serving up orange Kool Aid. At first it was... okay. I don't mind the odd glass of Kool Aid now and again, but a steady diet of it is a turnoff.

Now every so often, instead of a pitcher of Kool Aid, we get a treat. We get some OJ from concentrate. And after so much Kool Aid, we smile and enjoy it. Because we've almost forgotten that OJ is better than Kool Aid, it's been so long since we had any.

Now I've basically taken on two regular Marvel titles. One is... OJ from concentrate. The other? The other is Tropicana. And that's on average. Occasionally, it's actually fresh-squeezed. (The from-concentrate was Avengers Arena. It's over now, but there's a new series launching that I'm going to try. Daredevil is my Tropicana.)

The problem? After Tropicana, I can't even kid myself that I'm enjoying Kool Aid anymore. I can kinda tolerate the stuff from concentrate in the hope that the storytellers will eventually hit Tropicana levels, but DC's default setting these days seems to be Kool Aid.

NW is the closest thing to Tropicana they've got. And they're diluting it with water.

I think it hit me last month when I realized a couple things about DD:

1) I am actually going back and rereading issues 2, 3, 4 times. It's been a VERY long time since I did that with ANY DC title unless I was doing it for screenshots of reasons an issue irked me.

2) I am buying the Silver Age DD off Comixology and... yes, some of them are silly and dated and hokey the way some Silver Age stories are. But I'm STILL enjoying them more than present-day DC.

3) I am actually forcing myself to limit my DD purchases to 2 per week to save my budget (and not always successfully. I got 4 today.)

Now. Let's backtrack. Do you know how long I've been a Dick Grayson fan? Since I was about 4 or maybe 5, depending on when our cable affiliates ran the 1976 Filmation Batman series. And Superfriends. I didn't get into the comics until the late 80s, but I always considered myself a fan (though I admit I was a Bat-fan. TT weren't on my radar. Their cartoon wasn't on when I was a kid.)

My exposure to DD? Reading a reprint of his origin in Son of Origins of Marvel Comicsand a 20-second Matt Murdock cameo on Spiderman and his Amazing Friends. So... knowing next to nothing of DD canon, in a little over a year, it's gone from 'hey, Mark Waid's writing this. Let's try it.' to 'Why is this only coming out once a month? Can't it be weekly?'

And with DC it's... 'Well... maybe this time they won't drop the ball... again. Okay, that was kinda good. That was decent. Maybe they finally... ARGH!!!!! Not again!'

I am so tired of drinking Kool Aid.