Posted in: Batman, Comics, DC Comics | Tagged: absolute, Absolute Batman, chip zdarsky, Deniz camp, Frank Barbiere, Gerry Duggan, gossip, james tynion iv, kelly thompson, Matthew Rosenberg, Patrick Kindlon, scott snyder, si spurrier, slack

Comic Creators Bitchin', Snitchin' And Pitchin' On Absolute Batman

When talking smack about the absolute-ly most popular and well-reviewed comic being published right now, it might get back to the creators.

Last week, Bleeding Cool ran comic book creator Patrick Kindlon's "Stop Snitchin" YouTube video in which he criticised creators stating, "Recently, a big writer, sorry to blind item this, a big writer was outed as a big snitch, a fellow that tries to hurt other people's career by virtue of going to the guy that can hurt your career and exposing you for having opinions, right? So, some people got jammed up on this because they thought that they were among friends and could speak freely, but it turns out that they couldn't."

So what actually happened? Well, Bleeding Cool has been looking into this, with a few names redacted to protect the guilty. There is – or rather there was – a private comic creator Slack channel populated by some of the biggest names in creator-owned and corporate comic books. Think of some of the bigger names with feet in both worlds, and odds are they were in this slack. But not Scott Snyder.

We know this because some of the creators started bitching about Absolute Batman and the Absolute Universe line from DC Comics, which have been getting extraordinarily high sales of late. Firstly, its quality, but also arguing that this was sucking all the attention away from smaller creator-owned books like theirs. Now, to be fair, that was an argument I heard last year from some executives, taking in the impact of the Ultimate and Energon Universe lines as well. But Absolute Batman has recently put all their sales in the shade, and all without a blind bag to do it.

So a number of people on the Slack then shared screencaps of the discussions with Scott Snyder. Patrick Kindlon knows of one, and I know the one he means as well, but it would be unfair to shame him individually, as a number of others did the same. It was basically an Orient Express situation.

But it could have been any of the members of the group, which included, amongst many others, Matthew Rosenberg, Chip Zdarsky, Gerry Duggan, Si Spurrier, Frank Barbiere, Deniz Camp, Patrick Kindlon, James Tynion IV, and Kelly Thompson. So yes, that includes a number of friends and colleagues of Scott Snyder, it was going to get to him. What is more amusing is that a number of those "bitching" creators, now of whom there had been "snitching", had also been "pitching" to Scott Snyder, both for the Absolute Universe and for DC Next Level books. Basically saying "the impact of these Absolute titles on the industry is terrible" and "can I do one?"

However, as a result of all this, the Slack group in question has been closed by the people who set it up, a little embarrassed by the whole thing. It's like Spitting Cobras, Panic Room or Brooklyn Bizarro all over again. But as to the claims made, I have been talking to sales executives at a number of publishers this week, big and small, who are astounded by them. Noting that a sizeable number of comic book stores have opened as a direct result of the Absolute, Ultimate and Energon lines. That many more have been saved by them. And even if there was any truth that a retailer didn't order a copy of their comic in favour of Absolute Batman, the number of stores that now exist who can, and do, order their book more than makes up for it.

If anything, there can be lessons learned from the Absolute Universe over how to market all manner of books, and a number of publishers, big and small, have been doing so. Every month, I get a number of books being described as "Absolute" this or that. Some, like AWA and its Oz book, have done that very literally.

Not that Scott Snyder seems to care about any of this. He seems rather chill these days. Bleeding Cool has even confirmed from sources close that he did not wish the Slack closed and requested it remain open instead. Indeed, I noted that after all this came out, he was even retweeting and reposting news, announcements and projects from some of the people named on the screencaps who, indeed, were bitching and pitching him at the time….

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