Back in January, former Static Shock writer John Rozum revealed what he believed to be the reason's behind the book's faulure.
...since the announcement that Static Shock would cease publication with issue #8 ( I was only involved with issues 1-4) there's been a lot of online chatter about why the series failed, and I've received a lot of angry email blaming me for wrecking the series, the character, and the opportunity for an African-American character to take centre stage at one of the big publishing companies. I've had people announce that due to the low quality of comic that they would no longer buy anything that had my name on it. I've had an editor at a publisher other than DC say they weren't interested in having me write for them because they thought Static Shock was a poor comic book series.
I don't really care what people think of me personally. Not everyone is going to like me, that's a given. That's okay. I don't really care if people don't like my work. I can't please everyone. No one can. That's okay, too. There are enough people who do like my work that I'm happy to have them, and happy to let those who don't like my work read the stuff they do like. That's all good. I finally spoke out because I'm unwilling to have my professional reputation damaged because of something that is not my responsibility. I've always been very vocal about crediting my collaborators for their contributions, or for others for inspiring aspects of my work, and always been completely willing to take responsibility for something I did that turned out to be less than it could have been.
From the first issue on, I was essentially benched by Harvey Richards and artist/writer Scott McDaniel. All of my ideas and suggestions were met with disdain, and Scott McDaniel lectured me on how my method for writing was wrong because it wasn't what the Robert McKee screenwriting book he read told him was the way to do things. The man who'd never written anything was suddenly more expert than me and the editor was agreeing with him. Scott had also never read a Static comic book, nor seen the cartoon series, yet was telling me that my dialogue didn't sound true to the character and would "fix it."
There was more concern about seeing that the title sold and didn't get cancelled than there was in telling good stories and having something coherent to bring readers in. This is what led Harvey to insist on the stuff with the two Sharon's and cutting off Static's arm. He had no answers for how to resolve these things, but thought it would keep reader's wowed enough to stick with the series. This, too, was frustrating. It was a lot of grasping at straws and trying to second guess what would keep it selling. It was decided that "bigger action" on every page of every issue was the key.
Static's alter ego, Virgil, who was more important to the original series than his super hero persona, was put on the very back burner because Harvey said it wasn't important and that the book just needed to be all action. One of my scripts was deemed too slow because there were a total of 4 pages where no one was hitting or shooting anything.
To give credit where credit is due, my meagre contributions to Static Shock amount to including Hardware, naming the school after Dwayne McDuffie, giving Virgil an after school job at S.T.A.R. labs, the Pale Man, Guillotina and the random line of dialogue. That's about it. If you didn't like any of those things, blame me. Everything else was Scott and Harvey.
It was a miserable experience, which I tried to weather professionally, and see if I could turn back into my favour, but that never worked. I was also determined to stick with it out of loyalty to Dwayne McDuffie hoping that I could fix what was going very wrong with this series. I even voiced my unhappiness with Harvey Richards who promised me that the situation would change. When I received an email from Harvey telling me that he and Scott had been plotting out the series without me, after Harvey had promised me that I'd be back in the driver's seat as the writer, I'd had enough and quit. The experience as a whole was incredibly stressful, and I became physically ill just seeing an email in my inbox from either Harvey, or Scott.
I was stunned by how unprofessionally I was being treated by my editor, with whom I'd previously had nothing but a positive working relationship with for the bulk of my career in comics, and by Scott McDaniel, who seemed like a nice, personable guy, and the interactions he's had with his fans that I've read would indicate really is one. My negative experience was exclusively with these two people and not with anyone else at DC Comics, or with DC as a whole. As I said, no one knew any of this was happening until I quit and let the executives at DC know why. Anyone who wants to believe that my experience was some general DC policy would be wrong to think that. Bob Harras, Geoff Johns, Dan Didio, and Jim Lee did not tell Harvey Richards to reject all of my contributions on this. Harvey decided that, himself. All of my other experiences with a variety of people at DC going back to the 90s have been overwhelmingly positive. Again, they handled the situation, once I quit, rather well, I thought.
Since then, Rob Liefeld and George Perez have both abandoned projects they were working on citing editorial problems. Judd Winnick has also announced his departure from DC in the last few days, although in a much quieter manner than Liefeld. Then there's Peter Milligan, who was taken off of Justice League Dark, and replaced with Jeff Lemire, a great writer, although it appears as though he was put on the book to fit in with DC's Trinity War plans, rather than for his writing prowess.
Regardless of your personal feelings towards the aforementioned talent, it's a worrying trend for fans. The cancellation of 12 books in as many months, and the introduction of a new logo just five months after the 'don't call it a reboot' relaunch, only further supports Liefeld's suggestions of haphazard decision making and editorial overstepping their bounds.
Worried? As long as DC keeps pumping out great books like Animal Man and Batwoman I'm happy, but it certainly isn't an encouraging sign for the future.
Log in to comment