A thread follows: I came across an oft-recurring discussion this morning about how corporate comics (DC, Marvel, etc.) are so dull and repetitive, compared to creator-owned comics, or comics from smaller publishers/groups.

These things do pop up from time to time and most of what is discussed as to the reasons behind dull corporate comics are accurate, reasonable assumptions. However one contributing factor is always ignored, so I’m sticking my nose in.

Among the many reasons corporate comics can be less innovative, and always more repetitive, than their smaller competitors (Batman fights and beats Joker. Joker goes to the looney bin. He breaks out. Batman fights Joker. Repeat endlessly), is these characters are...

...valuable company assets. You can’t get rid of them. You can get away with the illusion of killing them for a time, but you can’t just dump one of these characters permanently, no matter how much that might improve your stories, or shake things up in your moribund cycle.

In fact, it can be illegal to do so. Publicly owned corporations aren’t allowed to just dump valuable company assets for no (or insufficient) return. Your stockholders can take you to task for it — and have. That’s why, when DC decided to kill off Robin in that infamous...

...phone in voting stunt, and there was real discussion about keeping Batman unencumbered with a teenage sidekick from then on, the corporate bosses above DC brought the hammer down, demanding that Robin be restored soon (I forget the actual deadline, but it numbered in days)...

...or else! One doesn’t just dispose of valuable corporate assets. That’s why you can briefly kill Peter Parker, as long as Spider-Man is still available in other forms, but since Peter Parker is also a valuable property, he better be back soon too.

“Not change, but the illusion of change,” to repeat the old Stan Lee rule. So then, this is by far not the only reason corporate comics can be so often dull and repetitive, but it’s one of the bigger unseen considerations. Thank you. Related thread follows.

Related thread: Since I’m often asked why no Fables movie yet, there are far too many reasons, and a few blunders. But one of the things that can keep a comic property from being adapted into movies and TV is that same bugaboo: it being...

...a valuable corporate asset. Let’s say some big comics company has the exclusive rights to Money Man, the beloved superhero. On all of its asset sheets (or forms, or whatever they call it), they list this property as being worth 20 million bucks. For as long as that movie...

...never gets made, it’s always 20 million bucks on the asset sheet, which gets reported as such every year to the stockholders. “Your company is worth this much, 20 million bucks of which is because we own the movie rights to Money Man.”

But, if you actually allow the movie to be made, and no one is willing to give you 20 million bucks for the rights, then you’ve lost money in the eyes of your shareholders. “We only got 2 million for the Money Man rights, so yes, we lost 18 million this year.”

So what if that 20 million figure was entirely imaginary? That’s how this crazy business world works. That’s why Trump could claim his name value was in the billions, and add that amount to his so-called net worth. It’s an imaginary world, folks.

And it’s hard to allow real things, like actually allowing a movie to get made, to upset that valuable imaginary construction. I’m amazed anything actually gets made. And by the way, I declare that my next new comics project, which I’m going to do...

...someday, is worth 60 million bucks. Therefore I am in fact a multi-millionaire, and I’ll thank you all to treat me just a bit better in the future.