From the M.O.D.O.K. Holiday Special.

Monthly or More (ongoing):

• Flash (DC)
• Fallen Angel (IDW, formerly DC)
• Fables (Vertigo)
• Countdown to Final Crisis (DC)
• Noble Causes (Image)
• Dynamo 5 (Image)
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Dark Horse)

Bimonthly, Less Frequently, or on Hiatus:

• Planetary (WildStorm, one more issue)
• Desolation Jones (WildStorm)
• All-Star Superman (DC)
• Astro City (WildStorm)
• Book of Lost Souls (Icon)

Mini-Series

• Salvation Run (DC)
• Countdown To Adventure (DC)
• Teen Titans Year One (DC)

Waiting for Trades:

• Powers (Icon, formerly Image)
• A Distant Soil (Image)
• Girl Genius (Studio Foglio)
• Freshmen (Top Cow)

Still heavily weighted DC over Marvel. 10 of 19 are either DC or an imprint (WildStorm & Vertigo), and one book started at DC. Both Marvel books are Icon, their imprint for creator-owned books. One is on hiatus and one is sporadic. Of the 7 books with a regular schedule, 3 are DC, and one of those is weekly. Plus I’m more likely to pick up crossovers or events from DC than from another company—see Salvation Run, for instance (though I’m mainly buying it for the Rogues, who were the viewpoint characters in issue #1 but strangely absent from #2.) So DC is still getting the bulk of my comics budget.

Very little shared universe stuff. Of the 5 DCU books, 3 are mini-series (4 if you include Countdown), and one of those is a flashback. No Marvel or Ultimates. Just two Image and one WildStorm universe (and that’s only got one issue left).

I’m also thinking I might drop All-Star Superman. While it’s certainly a more entertaining read than other books, I realized that I don’t really care about it.

What’s changed since my last post at the end of 2004?

Added: Desolation Jones, Dynamo 5, A Distant Soil, All-Star Superman, Book of Lost Souls, Freshmen, Buffy, Countdown, Countdown to Adventure, Teen Titans Year 1, Salvation Run.
Dropped: Teen Titans, Outsiders, Astonishing X-Men, Squadron Supreme
Ended: Tellos, Forsaken, Ocean (mini), Rising Stars
Tried: Shadowpact, Jack of Fables, Beyond Avalon, Justice Society of America, Jack Cross, Fell, Wonder Woman
Came and went: Infinite Crisis (and all 5 lead-ins), Seven Soldiers, Secret Six, 52; Otherworld, The Atheist, The Stardust Kid, Mnemovore, Eternals, Elric: Making of a Sorceror, New Spring, Neverwhere, several Angel & Spike minis

It’s interesting to note that all the books I’ve dropped were “big two” super-hero team books. And aside from Infinite Crisis and 52, most of the series that launched and ended weren’t standard super-her books. Seven Soldiers would be the closest.

DC has been great and I’m very pleased and relieved, bizarrely enough, that they cancelled “Fallen Angel.” Had they not, I’d be in a very tough position because if they were still publishing it and Marvel wanted me to go exclusive, well they certainly wouldn’t have let me keep writing “Fallen Angel” for DC. So, I would have had to make a really tough choice—weigh a comic book I love against my family’s security and health. Fortunately enough I was spared having to make that decision.

It reminded me of the time I realized that VR.5‘s cancellation freed up Anthony Stewart Head to join the cast of Buffy. Or that the Sci Fi Channel turned down the B5 spinoff Crusade in part because they’d just launched Farscape.

I do wonder, though. JMS also had several books grandfathered in when he signed an exclusive with Marvel. Those included Rising Stars and Dream Police at Top Cow… and a Babylon 5 graphic novel for DC/Wildstorm (which has yet to be finished). I suspect the facts that it was a media license and a one-shot probably helped.

It’s also interesting to read Peter David’s comments about Fallen Angel and Icon. You’d think Marvel’s Icon label would be perfect—bigger circulation, lower price, still creator-owned—but IDW put so much effort into relaunching the book that he felt it would be wrong to just pack it in and take it to another publisher as long as they still wanted to publish it.

It would have been odd, though. I wonder how many books have, at different times, been published by both Marvel and DC? The only one that comes to mind right now is Elfquest. Marvel reprinted the original series through Epic in the 1980s, and DC is now handling the manga-sized reprints, the Archive editions, and new stories (still from Wendy and Richard Pini).

Given that the lawsuit was basically the equivalent of suing pencil manufacturers because they could potentially be used to draw Spider-Man, it’s good to see that Marvel didn’t win (though a precedent-setting loss for Marvel might’ve been better in the long run).

(via Slashdot)

Both feature ex-heroes who now work as “normal” detectives. Christian Walker is a homicide cop, and Jessica Jones is a private investigator. Early on we learn that Walker’s hero identity was Diamond. When we finally get the details of Jessica’s back story, it turns out she went by the name Jewel.

The similarities pretty much end there, though. Despite the names and circumstances, the characters, stories, and overall feel of the two books are quite different. Alias is “comic book noir,” and Powers is a cop show in a city overrun with super-powers. Alias tends to be far more character-driven. Jessica gets into trouble during investigations, but it’s her and the people she’s looking for who are most affected. Powers works on a bigger scale, looking at superheroes as celebrities, and when things go wrong, they affect everyone.

(I’ve got a dozen or so issues of Powers up for auction as well — for the same reason!)