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The comic-book movie war is on!
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As Disney prepares to take over Marvel, Time Warner is asserting more control over DC (DC Comics)
Shocking maneuvers in the corporate structure of DC Comics today lets us know that, to the companies that own them, at least, comic-book publishers are move in the business of making movies than they are in the business of churning out comic books.
As you'll see elsewhere on the Web, Time Warner's Warner Brothers today brought its DC Comics unit even closer under its own corporate control. Previously. DC, which has published Batman. Superman and Wonder Woman for more than half a century, has been left to its own devices, with movie-making taking place almost as an afterthought.
By forming a unit called DC Entertainment, with a movie executive at its helm, Warner seems to be saying that movies are paramount, not the flimsy comics. The move takes place just a week after Time Warner rival Walt Disney purchased Pepsi-to-DC's-Coke Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion.
So it's left for fans to discover whether the Warner move will be good or bad for the comics we buy each week. Some might way that DC execuitives guarded their characters too closely, hence Time Warner's relative paucity of super-hero films (just Batman and Superman so far, though Green Lantern is on the way).
People who scrutinize corporate press releases will notice that Paul Levitz, a longtime top DC exec, has stepped aside in favor of consulting and writing. Will DC try even braver and bolder stunts with its heroes, and will their comics stil be as good? There has been tons of controversy over the publisher's direction under current editor Dan DiDio; some of the storylines seem arbitrary and capricious, designed to please the whims of a top editor, and not so well thought out. On the other hand, DiDio's moves have brought new popularity to one-time laggards Green Lantern and the Justice Society, to name a few. And Batman is more exciting than he's been in years.
You'll have to decide if this new era of comics as moviemakers is all "Action!" or deserves a sound "Cut!"
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