Saturday, July 30, 2005

NEWSARAMA - GREG RUCKA TALKS "SACRIFICE"

A couple of weeks ago, I was musing here whether or not to buy DC's upcoming Infinite Crisis. Thanks to DC and Greg Rucka for turning OMAC Project (a miniseries that leads into Infinite Crisis) from a six-issue series into a ten-issue series by putting a key, indispensible plot point in a story running in three issues of Superman and one issue of Wonder Woman, they've pretty much made up my mind: I'm not buying it. At least not as a serialized story. I'll buy it once it's collected, but I'm not going to start buying what is supposed to be a seven-issue series, only to discover halfway through that it only makes sense if I also buy however many additional issues of series I wouldn't ordinarily buy.

That's the thing about these big crossover miniseries and having the regular comics tie into them: you should get a greater sense of the big picture, and enhanced enjoyment, if you buy all the tie-in stories. But if you're obligated to buy them, because otherwise the core story won't make any sense, then that's just a marketing ploy. And I'm not interested in buying even a single issue of a coming I'm not currently getting regularly, just to get the "full story" of a miniseries I'm buying. Particularly if I'm not sure if the miniseries will be all that good in the first place.

The thing is, as much as Greg Rucka wants to apologize in this article about how it wasn't intentional, that they didn't want to obgligate anyone to buy any issues beyond the OMAC miniseries, that's crap. The crossover story, where a key plot point occurs, involves four other comics and two other writers. And that takes a certain amount of planning and coordination. It doesn't just happen. And if it can happen in this case, it can happen in another. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice... So, screw 'em. They've lost me as a customer, at least on Infinite Crisis as a monthly series. And, except for the Darwyn Cooke Spirit series, they'll have an uphill battle getting me on board for any new ongoing DC superhero comics, too.

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