Wonder Wednesday Part 2 - This Looks Ominous

Well, this is all kinds of interesting/disturbing/ominous. Comic Book Resources did a poll on all 52 new DC Comics and had fans vote on whether they were likely to buy them. (I wish I'd known about this ahead of time and had participated, but alas...) These fans (10,181 of them, all together) selected whether they were Absolutely, Very Likely, Likely, Unlikely or Not At All (Likely) to buy each individual book and the results are somewhat to be expected... mostly.

Well, first of all, it does this Aquafan's heart proud to know that none other than Aquaman actually scored in the Top Five books fans were Absolutely going to buy! Jigga wha--?! After all those "talks to fish" jokes? After "Whitefish?" Suddenly Aquaman is outpacing The Flash (yeah, corny pun WAY intended) and the other luminaries of the DCU as one of the Top FIVE MUST-READ books coming out?! I may faint!

The number one title, not surprisingly, is Justice League of America, since it will star all of DC's big name heroes... and Cyborg and they have stated that this is will be the line's flagship title, so 57.7% of fans say they will Absolutely be buying this title. (5,870 voters!) The 14.7% who voted Not At All, probably went down the list and voted that on every single title. The other Top Five titles were Action Comics, Green Lantern, Batman and Aquaman, in that order. Not too surprising, except I find it odd that 55.9% of voters are Absolutely going to buy Action Comics, whereas 30.2% are Not At All going to buy Superman (versus 27.2% who voted Absolutely)! And a similar thing happened with Batman and Detective. 47% say they are Absolutely going to buy Batman, but 36.1% say they are Not At All going to buy Detective, versus 25.4% who voted Absolutely! What am I missing here?

As for the Bottom Five, it's not that surprising that the genre books flopped with voters. I, Vampire was the lowest rated, with 68.5% voting Not At All. (But what about Twilight?!?!) Following that up were OMAC (66.9%), Voodoo (64.2%), Hawk & Dove (63.8%, and I guarantee you, it's due to the Liefeld artwork!) and Sgt. Rock and the Men of War (61.7%).

On a sigh-worthy note, though except for Batwoman (33.8% Absolutely), EVERY female-led title wound up in the Not At All category. Wonder Woman (29.3% Not At All... it's gotta be the suit!), Birds of Prey (48.2%), Catwoman (44.8%), Supergirl (47.6%), the afore mentioned Voodoo and most shockingly Batgirl (33%). As controversial as the Batgirl issue has been, you'd think people would pick it up just for controversy's sake!

And Batwoman has her own built-in fanbase and I think everyone realizes that her book has NOTHING to do with this relaunch and will be basically the book it was always intended to be all along. I am really puzzled by Batgirl, though. People seemed to want her back in that role for EVER. I know a lot of people are upset about her leaving the role of Oracle, but THAT MANY?!

Even more disheartening, if not alarming, EVERY title showcasing minority characters wound up in the Not At All category. EVERY one! (Well, once again, not counting Batwoman.) Even Green Lantern Corps, starring John Stewart and Guy Gardner! EVEN GREEN LANTERN CORPS!!! Green Lantern is the #3 Must-Have book and Corps is in the Not At All pile?! WHY?! HOW?!

The Hall of Shame is as follows: GLC (34.4% Not At All), The Fury of Firestorm (42.6%), Mister Terrific (55.5%), Batwing (32.9%), Static Shock (60.2%!), Stormwatch (41.8%, starring gay members Midnighter and Apollo) and Blue Beetle (46.7%). I'm really stunned by just how SOUNDLY so many of these were trounced, especially Static Shock!

The one mitigating factor is that the MAJORITY of titles seem to have wound up in this category possibly because fans are just pissed off in general and are opposed to this relaunch and like I said before, I'm sure a bunch of people voted no on every title. Sigh! I guess no matter how DC may try to diversify, straight white male comic fans ONLY want to see themselves represented and can ONLY relate to characters that are like themselves. Welcome back to the 50s!