Static Shock: What went wrong

Last week when DC announced the cancellation of six of the lowest selling of the new 52, I was very sad to see Static Shock on the list. I’ll be honest, I really liked the first issue of this but the writing after that went down hill. It was a surprise because the team, Scott McDaniel and John Rozum, seemed perfect when the book was announced.

But I don’t think the quality of the book was the only issue. There are plenty of books that suffer from poor writing that sell a ton of copies. I think the bigger issue was that while DC committed to publishing the book, they didn’t commit to change their marketing to make the book a success.

Virgil Hawkins aka Static had a huge following on television a decade ago in the 2-11 age demographic. Funny enough those viewers would be just the right age for comics right now. But did any of those people know he now had a comic book? The marketing of books with diverse leads is just as problematic as the issues of marketing to women (and I’ll have some a very interesting post on that next week). I predicted that this would happen when I spoke to Wired.

I worry desperately about the fate of the mid-tier books like Mister Terrific, Batwoman, Static Shock and Blue Beetle and Birds of Prey, all of which will be up against incredible odds to get attention.

The pricing for those books should have been $1.99 for the first 6 months to give them some visibility and get people to try them. New readers aren’t going to drop $100+ on comics a month. DC will be lucky to get them to buy 2-3 books. And those mid-tier books are going to get lost in the shuffle. And then we’ll hear, “we tried but no one wanted them.”

I was right about two of the books. I am very happy to say I am wrong, so far, on the other three.

Static Shock also had to contend with derision by the loud, vocal LCS including grave dancing:

Don’t worry this isn’t Larry being Larry, he also said some white characters didn’t deserve to have titles either.

Writer Danny Donovan over at Michael Davis World outlines very well the issue that the book faced and comes to the same conclusion that I share:

DC dropped the ball on what could be a shining example of using this new universe to create a great teen franchise. And with the new DC Nation block on Cartoon Network it would be a great way of getting a new Static Shock show on the air.

Marketing wasn’t the only issue. John Rozum the writer posted  a comment on the Donovan’s post on why he left the book:

I went into Static Shock with a lot of high hopes. Among them was showing that Static wasn’t simply an A-list character, but one of the most powerful in the DCnU. I really wanted this series to be fun and exciting and to bring the same degree of creativity to it that I put into Xombi balanced with making Virgil’s personal life at least as engaging as his superhero life. I also saw Static Shock as an excellent gateway through which to pull the rest of the Milestone characters into the DCnU.

I quickly learned that none of these plans were going to see fruition. I wound up being shunted to the sidelines as the writer while Scott McDaniel’s “high concept” criminal syndicate made up of Power Rangers and a big monosyllabic thug took center stage and Harvey’s ideas of the 2 Sharon’s and slicing off Static’s arm were implemented as desperate means of trying to draw attention to the book.

I tried my best to keep it from being a total turd, but as I said, I was completely sidelined. My main contributions were the Pale Man character, Guillotina, naming the school after Dwayne McDuffie, and including Hardware, along with random lines of dialogue. I decided it was unethical to stick with a title that a) I thought was garbage b) that people were buying because of my involvement, due to Xombi, when really I had nothing to do with it c) because I wasn’t being utilized on the title.

Frankly, Static deserved a lot better.

Agreed.

So what now? Does DC sit back and see Static, a key legacy of Dwayne McDuffie and Milestone, fade into the background with the “we tried, no one bought it” excuse? Do they team him up with other teen characters like Jaime Reyes? Do they put him into one of their other teen books like The Ravager or Teen Titans?

Whatever they do, I hope they do it better. They should leverage his fan base, they should let good writers be good writers instead of having editorial meddle, and they should realize that putting out a book like Static needs the opportunity an scale of digital so it can overcome the lazy LCSs who only want books with Batman on the cover.

The numbers are settling in on the reboot. Some books are very close to pre-reboot numbers. Did they reboot bring in a new diverse set of readers to set the company on a course for the future.? Or have the simply plugged up the holes on the ship with returning readers to keep afloat and chugging along?

On February 9 at the ComicPro meeting in Dallas, DC Comics will unveil the results of the survey they commissioned from Nielsen. It will be interesting to see what the current comic reading market consists of. More importantly it will provide insight into whether the white, male, 18-34 readership is still the base of the market.

I hope that DC gives Static another try. The bitter irony is that Static Shock was considered by many to be a black Spider-Man. And now there is a black Spider-Man who is hugely successful for Marvel. And Static for DC Comics is a failure of execution, marketing and apparent editorial meddling.