Monday, September 02, 2013

Ask Me Anything #32



It's the first Monday of the month which means it's time for me to take your questions and answer them as best I can. So, "Ask Me Anything." 

You can ask me any questions you'd like, whether it's about my work, opinions, influences, favorites, least favorites, my summer reading, which summer movies I've seen, or avoided, or anything else you think I might have an answer for. Questions can be posted in the comments section below, and I'll either answer them there, or in a separate post sometime later in the month.

Please take the time to view the previous questions so that we don't wind up with a lot of repetition. I've been asked a lot of good, thought provoking questions in the past as well as some really banal ones, all of which I tried to answer. You can see the previous questions by visiting Ask Me Anything  #1#2 ,  #3#4#5#6 , #7 , #8#9,  #10,  #11,  #12 , #13#14,  #15 , #16#17 , #18 , #19,  #20,  #21#22,  #23#24#25#26#27#28#29#30, and #31.  Answers not found following the questions can be found in the archives section for each associated month under Ask Me Anything.

"Ask Me Anything" will return on the first Monday of November while I dedicate all of next month to my annual Halloween countdown. 

Now ask away. 

6 comments:

Joe said...

I sent this to you as an email and thought for whatever reason if you dont check it or whatever i may be able to get an answer here.

Do you have any idea whats going on with DC and Milestone right now? As i said im a huge fan of Static and it sucks that all this stuff is happening. Someone last October said that Raven might go off and start her own Teen Titans. When asked if Static would join they said it would make them happy too but current "Legal Issues" are preventing that from happening.

These legal issues may have been part of the reason Young Justice was canceled(Static,Icon and Rocket were in The show) Also Static and the other milestone characters werent shown in the "DC Adventures" Roleplaying Books" Heck i dont think the dakota-verse was mentioned. I read (even before the mentioning of the legal issues from that interview) hat there were some legal issues that prevented them from putting static and them in there.

That little talk from is the last thing that i can find on the situation back in 2012. I read that you left DC so im not sure if you would know anything or if you know someone that could help you but nothing would make me happier to find out that milestone and DC are getting closer to taking care of this. If not that then at least some form of closure knowing that they arent patching things up or maybe some hope that they are still trying to work things out.

I know it is alot to read so to break it down my question is

"Do you know what is going on with DC and Milestone? If not could you find out for me?"

John Rozum said...

Joe, I'm going to answer this here, since I'm sure other people are wondering about this, too.

I don't know for certain, but I'm guessing, and hoping, that DC has let the publishing rights lapse back to Milestone. I'll see if I can find out for sure. I don't know that any of this was a factor with Young Justice. They could have just stopped using the characters. I suspect it's simply that CN is really only behind their own shows which is why Gumball, Adventure Time, Regular Show, and others seem to be on 24 hours a day.

When I was allegedly writing Static Shock, it was made very clear to me that just because I had hardware in the comic didn't mean I was going to be allowed to start bringing in all the other Milestone characters, which is something I very much wanted to do. I don't think DC was ever really interested in the Milestone characters beyond Static. Sales aside, they cancelled Xombi before the first issue was available for ordering.

Citing legal issues means they are passing the buck. They are pretending that there's nothing they'd rather do than include Static in a team book, but Milestone is being difficult. If DC really wanted to make Static, or any of the other Milestone characters part of any team, they had plenty of time to do that before the license to publish these characters ran out.

What I hope will happen is that Milestone will license the characters out to a different publisher, one that not only actually wants to use the characters, but actually adores and respects them. Then maybe people will see the Static Shock series that should have been part of the New 52. DC has never really been supportive of Milestone, even when Milestone was publishing regularly.

I'm sorry not to be able to give you a better, or more positive response, as you say, anyone in the know at DC isn't going to tell me anything, and the people who now are in charge of the Milestone property have their own full time jobs to concern them. I'll try and find out something though, because I would certainly like to write some of those characters again, even if it's somewhere else.

Michael C. said...

1) I know I read from Bruce Timm somewhere that one of the primary reasons that Young Justice was cancelled is because the merchandise sales on Young Justice were very low.

2) If Milestone publishing rights go to another publisher, does that mean you could write Xombi somewhere else? Would you be interested in doing so?

John Rozum said...

1) That could be.

2) If other publishers could pick up the Milestone license, that does in fact mean that I could do Xombi elsewhere. Would I be interested? Absolutely. I'd love to possibly finish the story I started way back when, and last time we discussed it, Frazer wanted to go forward on it as well. I can think of at least one publisher that would jump on this if it was a possibility.

Joe said...

Joe again

I thank you for responding, if you can find out anything that would be amazing. As i stated he is my favorite DC hero and is the guy that got me into comics. I wouldn't exactly want to see him go to another company but if that means he can be used then hey hopefully it happens. It just sucks cause ive read almost all his stuff. (still have a bit of his older stuff to read) and seeing my favorite hero come to a "end" so to speak hurts. Even his New 52 run i own 2 copies of (1 in trade and 1 of every issue)

Anyway if you do hear anything please post here to let me know. (ide say email me but i hardly ever check my email due to so much spam and whatnot)

Also, When you were writing (or before the whole fiasco happened) If i may ask, what were some of your ideas you had for Static? Story lines or tag team ups woudl be great to hear if you had those planned.

Joseph said...

Joe again, I want to apologize, while looking up today to see if any new Static/Milestone news had been announced (I check every so often)and i saw this article http://www.bleedingcool.com/2013/09/13/john-rozum-talks-milestone/ While im glad this sorta (in a small way) got out, It doesnt seem like any negative backlash would come from this but if any did then i apologize, I didnt mean for it to, Just a concerned fan. If none did then sorry for bothering you ^.^

Happy October