Villains Month

I’m not going to pretend that DC’s Villains Month in 2013 was anything other than a massive bare-faced sales gimmick. DC had gone through the game-changing New 52 reboot two years earlier in November 2011 (see Justice League Origin), which generated massive buzz in comic shops worldwide. After initial success, sales did begin to dip, and so DC rolled out a strategy of holding line-wide themed months every subsequent November, in order to spike the sales back up. November 2012 saw a month of ‘zero’ issues, where key secrets from each hero’s origin were revealed, but this was overshadowed by DC’s biggest gamble in November 2013, when the various villains and rogues took centre stage across all 52 titles, literally exploding out of the covers towards the reader.

In a genuine stroke of genius, DC printed off lenticular 3-D covers for every single title; particularly impressive since this was an entirely unproven printing technology. The result is spectacular though, with each villain blasting, swiping or otherwise gesticulating wildly out the page. The actual content of the comics themselves was a bit more patchy. I only picked up 20 out of the total 52 titles that month, so I can’t speak to all of them, but the ones I read fell into the following categories: (i) fleeting recaps or reinventions of the villains origin, or (ii) tie-ins to a subsequent ongoing arcs or miniseries.

The titles in category (i) varied in quality, with a few genuinely entertaining dark thrillers (Arcane, Cheetah and Joker were highlights), a few absolute stinkers (Deathstroke was terrible), and the majority sitting in the middle; providing well crafted, but largely forgettable glimpses that would probably only really appeal to readers that were already fans of the characters.

The comics in category (ii) were largely set-up, and so would potentially leave new readers feeling a bit shortchanged, eg. many of the Batman villains fed into the Arkham War miniseries. There were some notable exceptions though; in particular a small number that served as prologue to the first line-wide crossover event since the New 52 relaunch – Forever Evil!

Black Adam follows on from the events of the recent Shazam story arc, and plants the seeds of the anti-hero turn that the character would later take.

Secret Society focuses on Owlman and the Outsider, the evil analogues of Batman and Alfred, who (along with the rest of the evil Justice League) jumped over from a twisted alternate dimension and revealed themselves as the true antagonists in the shock finale of Trinity War.

Bizarro is weird science short that reveals Lex Luthor’s ambitious, yet flawed, program to create a slave clone of Superman.

Finally Lex Luthor charts a day in the life of the original ‘diseased maniac’, from his release from prison, and quickly falling back into his ruthless and sociopathic routine. This in particular is a chilling and blackly comic tale, and feeds directly into the first issue of the Forever Evil series, which Luthor wound up being the main character of.

The high degree of top-down editorial control that was required to pull-off these gimmicks did start to alienate much of the writing and drawing talent, and the sales saw diminishing returns with each subsequent year, until DC eventually found themselves languishing at levels below those from before the initial reboot. Lessons were learned, and DC refocused on allowing their creative teams to tell the best stories possible, which have now become top sellers amongst the comics audience. So despite all the murder and destruction, I suppose there was eventually a happy ending…