LET'S TALK: Before Watchmen

[JohnMayo]

DC announces a new Before Watchman 2 issue mini series featuring Moloch.

I didn't consider the possibility that DC was going to add to the initial Before Watchman titles.

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2012/08/25/ ... rdo-rizzo/

They have been selling well so it makes business sense for DC to try to do more.

[Webhead]

Picked up Dr. Manhattan and thought it felt like it was right out of the pages of Watchmen but the story did not grab me. It felt like it was just a retelling of what we have already seen. I am willing to give it a second issue but if it does not improve I will not be picking up #3

[ctowner1]

DC announces a new Before Watchman 2 issue mini series featuring Moloch.

I didn't consider the possibility that DC was going to add to the initial Before Watchman titles.

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2012/08/25/ ... rdo-rizzo/

They have been selling well so it makes business sense for DC to try to do more.

hey...perhaps if they keep selling, they'll give them their own imprint! (which I guess they sort of have already, now that I think of it!)

e
L nny

[Trev]

DC announces a new Before Watchman 2 issue mini series featuring Moloch.

I didn't consider the possibility that DC was going to add to the initial Before Watchman titles.

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2012/08/25/ ... rdo-rizzo/

They have been selling well so it makes business sense for DC to try to do more.

hey...perhaps if they keep selling, they'll give them their own imprint! (which I guess they sort of have already, now that I think of it!)

e
L nny

Do you really think that would work long term? Spinning off 2-4 on-going titles on a separate earth?

I think that's the approach the kills it.

Do 1-2 mini's a year whenever you have a good story to tell and it would do much better.

Think 'who wants to be a millionaire'. When it was on 1-2x a year, it was huge. All the time? Dead.

[BobBretall]

Do you really think that would work long term? Spinning off 2-4 on-going titles on a separate earth?

I think that's the approach the kills it.

Do 1-2 mini's a year whenever you have a good story to tell and it would do much better.

I agree, Trev. The thing that is making BW a success is the A-list creators. Making them ongoing would mean we'd most likely get creative teams that are not quite as high profile & the books would tank.

Do an occasional mini when there is an idea & an A-list team to execute it.

[HassanT]

Do you really think that would work long term? Spinning off 2-4 on-going titles on a separate earth?

I think that's the approach the kills it.

Do 1-2 mini's a year whenever you have a good story to tell and it would do much better.

I agree, Trev. The thing that is making BW a success is the A-list creators. Making them ongoing would mean we'd most likely get creative teams that are not quite as high profile & the books would tank.

Do an occasional mini when there is an idea & an A-list team to execute it.

I agree with both Trev and Bob. I don't think this would work as a regular thing. It has to be special.

In a way, this is DC's big event for 2012. Instead of a company wide crossover, it is a series of mini-series focusing on a group of characters by A-List creative teams.

[BobBretall]

I agree with both Trev and Bob. I don't think this would work as a regular thing. It has to be special.

In a way, this is DC's big event for 2012. Instead of a company wide crossover, it is a series of mini-series focusing on a group of characters by A-List creative teams.

I'd prefer it if this became the new way of doing an "event" and the Big 2 did away with the big invasive crossovers.

That said, the DC giveth & the DC taketh away. BW is great, but then they do this "Zero month" that is totally killing the momentum of stories across the entire line for me.

[JohnMayo]

I've been playing around with ways to diagram a timeline for a line of comics and I've put together a shipping timeline for the Before Watchmen titles:

http://www.comicbookpage.com/ForumImage ... eChart.png

It is a large image with 5904 pixels by 2585 pixels and is about 827 KB.

Let me know what you think of the format. One I automate the process, I'd like to do this for the New 52 and possibly the Marvel Now titles.

[BobBretall]

I've been playing around with ways to diagram a timeline for a line of comics and I've put together a shipping timeline for the Before Watchmen titles:

http://www.comicbookpage.com/ForumImage ... eChart.png

Neat! I like the thumbnails!

[Trev]

I've been playing around with ways to diagram a timeline for a line of comics and I've put together a shipping timeline for the Before Watchmen titles:

http://www.comicbookpage.com/ForumImage ... eChart.png

It is a large image with 5904 pixels by 2585 pixels and is about 827 KB.

Let me know what you think of the format. One I automate the process, I'd like to do this for the New 52 and possibly the Marvel Now titles.

Looks great! Would be cool to see a vertical line at the month mark. Easy to see then how many books in a month or when something slips. Or you could alternate some shading evey other month to make it stand out.

[HassanT]

I've been playing around with ways to diagram a timeline for a line of comics and I've put together a shipping timeline for the Before Watchmen titles:

http://www.comicbookpage.com/ForumImage ... eChart.png

It is a large image with 5904 pixels by 2585 pixels and is about 827 KB.

Let me know what you think of the format. One I automate the process, I'd like to do this for the New 52 and possibly the Marvel Now titles.

Really cool looking.

[JohnMayo]

Looks great! Would be cool to see a vertical line at the month mark. Easy to see then how many books in a month or when something slips. Or you could alternate some shading evey other month to make it stand out.

Yeah, shading the months makes sense. Unfortunately it is turning out to be rather challenging to do. I'm using GraphViz for this and I had been using clusters for each title. To do the shading requires switching the clusters for each ship week. The problem is when I do that it looks fine without the arrows but adding in the arrows knocks the clusters out of alignment.

Without arrows:
http://www.comicbookpage.com/ForumImage ... Arrows.png

With arrows:
http://www.comicbookpage.com/ForumImage ... Arrows.png

Once I get this part figured out, I'll work on automating the chart creation so I can easily use it for other charts. I'll also need to figure something out to automate getting the cover images.