Brands and Fans: an ongoing case study

DC Comic’s Convergence event is an interesting look at how companies try to interact with their fans and fandom.

My 2 Cents:

If DC really wanted to please its fans, it should just declare one universe as nutext. The company could still create new worlds and story lines. In fact, it should encourage and curate fan creation too. Trying to rein everything in under one editorial control is ridiculous.  Sure the event will help DC kick Marvel’s ass again in terms of comic sales, but that’s peanuts compared to the money made in movies, and the average theatre-goer really don’t know enough about character continuity to care.

As long as the brand essence remains, fans should be free to create whatever they want. In fact, even the brand essence should be challenged.  Great things come when that happens.

I love the idea of Superman going rogue and that it takes everyone else to stop him (like in the Injustice universe)

I love the idea of having a brutal Thomas Wayne as Batman because it was Bruce Wayne who was shot in that alleyway (like in Flashpoint universe)

Every comic geek has his/her own favourite version of DC character. And it’s not just based on which generation they belong to. I absolutely love Scott Snyder’s Batman even though I grew up on reruns of Adam West ‘66 Batman and Tim Burton’s ’89 Batman.

But I digress. 

They’ve got smart people in DC, so I’m sure (hope) they know what they’re doing.  Maybe I’m the one overthinking it. Maybe Convergence is not DC trying to control the narration, to get everything under one canon. Maybe DC’s just trying to tell a good story. That’d be awesome.

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And if all the above was just gibberish for you and you've just scrolled all the way to the bottom, here's the TLDR version: Ghani's showing his comic geek side by using DC Comic's current (April - May 2015) publication batch to show how companies still struggle to find the best way to interact with their fans.