This may not be new news exactly but I’m sure some of you have not herd it yet. In the last wave of DC comics cancellations Batwing again managed to elude the grim reaper and remain on store shelves unlike Static Shock, Voodoo and Mr. Terrific despite dwindling sales figures every month.
Now some may remember the departure of Judd Winnick from the title back in August 2012. Now we have Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti set to take over from fill in writer Fabian Nicieza:
“The last two books with new people is “Legion Of Superheroes,” where Francis Portela is returning to art, and “Batwing” where Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti are taking over the title. Justin and Jimmy are a duo that have done fare like “Jonah Hex” or “All-Star Western,” and the Freedom Fighters characters. Did they come to you about wanting to write Batwing?
Harras: They came to us with, and I do want to stress that Fabian [Nicieza] was there to help us out during transition time; he’s a great guy and really helped us out there. But Jimmy and Justin really pitched a new direction for Batwing that was very intriguing. And when I say new direction, I mean —
Chase: — a really solid new direction.
Harras: That’s really what sold us on it, to take “Batwing” in this direction.”
What is this new direction? Only time will tell but if this art to the right is to be believed we may be looking at a new costume and a mix between Iron man meets Batman in the coming months. Keep your eyes peeled as we continue to review the Batwing brand in the meantime check out the Sales Figures on the book and read all the Batwing related content on the site.
More as it breaks!
If you guys want better sales figures from black character titles then the answer is simple,USE BLACK WRITERS.It should be quite obvious by now that white comic audiences have no interest in black characters unless they’re a side kick or in the background.So in order to generate support for black comics then you have to use black writers and appeal to the black masses.Despite what most of white comic fans believe,Black Panther DVD was well received in the black comics community despite having almost no promotion or publicity.Hmmm I wonder why? Black America can easily tell who’s writing for a black hero because the dialogue is so stereotypical and quite frankly corny.No offence guys but white writers don’t think,talk,act or respond like we do.There’s a lot of talented black writers and artist who I’m sure woud love to have the opportunity to resurrect some of marvels and dc’s black heros .
Pretty much what Erik stated. Creating a character and a story just for the sake getting a readership from a particular demo graph does not work for me. It is possible to have some damn good stories of characters of other and variable ethnicity. If handled properly, and NOT for the aforementioned by Erik. I’m not looking for anything that’s crazy-‘us against the man’, afro-centric. But something that just happen to has main characters that aren’t third-string, low-powered black face heroes.
Batwing is a great book well at least it started off great, with the art and story. The tone was perfect, and you didn’t need Batman to cameo to make sales,now it’s all flash and crap! SMH IF you don’t want a well put together black comicbook character, then say so and get rid of it and not subject us to bullshit and say We made something just for YOU!
1. Batwing is given a throw away name which means they are not going to put the work into the character of Batwing(the man sounds like one of bat mans gadgets) in fact one of his plains is called ….The Batwing. Why doesn’t he pull a name from his background or some some mythological figure). His name is something that sounds bootleg and not thought out.
2. One thing that plagues black characters is a lack of worth wild villians. As you stated the series started out interesting with massacre and quickly went down the path of forgetable throw away foes from the bottom of the mort bin.
3. Even though the massacre storyline is interesting they should have kept building from it rather than just try to throw a rogue mort gallery at him. So it is inevitable that it will be canceled because DC barely knows what to do wtih the top guns rather than actually take the time to write a ethnic character as nothing more than a better represented footnote.
Simon Magus
curator/creator http://www.badmagics.com