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Executive Meddling/Comic Books: Difference between revisions
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** Kyle Rayner fans ultimately got theirs, when the makers of the ''[[Justice League]]'' cartoon omitted Kyle from the show in favor of John Stewart. This move pretty much united the fandoms against John Stewart.
** The irony of which being that the series introduced Stewart to a much wider audience and lead to the executives at DC reinstating him as a Green Lantern in the comics (he had earlier been stripped of his ring and crippled) and having him replace Kyle on the Justice League. So Kyle ended up not only being completely omitted from the cartoon Justice League, but the comic JLA as well.
* ''[[Sonic
** The last issue of the comic's ''EndGame'' story arc was intended to be a 40-page extravaganza, with a different ending which left Sally (who was dropped from a tall building by a Freedom Fighter tricked into wearing a Sonic costume and taking out what she ''thought'' was one of the gang's mortal enemies) stone dead. However, fan reaction to Sally's fate and Sega's push for using her as a marketing device forced the story to be cut down to the normal 27 pages, and changed Sally's death into a coma. The re-release of the arc in the ''Super Special'' anthology rectified most of these problems. Of course, then Sally's [[Chickification]] came along, later followed by her becoming a [[Creator's Pet]], both of which may very well be considered a [[Fate Worse Than Death]].
** In recent years, the layers of [[Executive Meddling]] are starting to be peeled away, showing just how screwed up the comic really is. Some notable ones being:
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* The British ''Sonic'' book, ''[[Sonic the Comic]]'', was brought to cancellation because of Executive Meddling: the publishers did not have faith that the book would continue its popularity, despite selling more than ''2000AD'' at one point, and began decreasing the budget and demanding that there only be one new story per issue, the others being reprints of older stories. Then the comic became 100% reprint, the cover illustrations being just about the only new thing in them, until finally, the comic was axed completely.
** These publishers operated under the bizarre, nonsensical idea that some comics won't last beyond a certain time despite what ''all'' sources and sales figures might say; they even considered cancelling ''2000AD'', Britain's most popular sci-fi comic and the "birthplace" of ''[[Judge Dredd]]''. Fortunately, the computer game company Rebellion bought the title, which continues to this day.
** Amongst the other comics they ''did'' cancel at around the same time was ''[[
** One of the comics' writers wanted Amy to be a more comical foil with her own flaws to develop upon (essentially an early version of game!Amy) however executives eventually pushed him into making her tougher and tomboyish. In the last arc of the series Nigel was able to mostly write her the way he wanted to, however it came off as almost OOC compared to the previous arcs. To fans this change was a good thing, making her the [[Badass Adorable|polar opposite]] of her other depictions in other series.
* The ''[[Spider-Man (Comic Book)|Spider-Man]]'' storyarc "[[One More Day]]", in which Spider-Man's entire history for the last twenty years has been [[Retcon|Retconned out of existence]] after a [[Deal
** To be fair, the end result ''didn't'' throw out twenty years of canon: most changes didn't happen [[For Want of a Nail]] as it originally seemed, but during a [[Time Skip]]. The only actual change to previous canon was that the marriage changed to a very committed relationship -- marriage in all but name. And if Quesada is to be believed, his conflict with Straczynski was because JMS was going ahead with changes that would have altered ''forty'' years of Marvel canon. JMS has since moved on to DC and been given free reign to completely rewrite the last 25 years of Wonder Woman continuity.
** Before ''One More Day'', there was the infamous ''Clone Saga'' in 1994. It was initially supposed to be a six-month arc, but after sales were good, Marvel's marketing department forcefully stretched out the story by almost ''two years'', ending in 1997.
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** Simon Furman later got hit by this. He spent a few years writing a series of epic ''Transformers'' stories for IDW publishing that featured [[Loads and Loads of Characters]], as well as interesting new concepts like the [[Zombie Apocalypse|Dead Universe]] and a plausible Decepticon invasion plan that made vehicular disguises relevant to the story. Then, due to falling sales, IDW decided to truncate Furman's twelve-issue [[Grand Finale]] into ''four'' issues of the Spotlight series (necessitating each chapter focusing on a single character's thoughts in addition to all the action), and a five issue "Maximum Dinobots" series so that they can put their publishing power behind ''All Hail Megatron''. Given the limited page count afforded him, Furman did an admirable job of wrapping up all his far-flung storylines.
*** Falling sales is debatable, while this was [[Jerkass|Denton J. Tipton]]'s claim, his replacement Andy Schmidt later said that the drop in sales was nowhere as bad as Tipton claimed.
** In 2010, the ''[[Transformers Timelines
** In another case of [[Tropes Are Not Bad]], the very graphic death scenes in ''[[Transformers Last Stand of the Wreckers]]'' were, according to [[Word of God|Nick Roche]], put in at Hasbro's request, who had apparently grown tired of how easily resurrectable Transformers were starting to be shown and wanted some definitive kills to show that death still meant something in Transformers.
*** That said, according to the trade Springer, Kup, and Perceptor were all going to die in one version. Hasbro vetoed one, IDW another, and the writers wussed out of the last one.
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*** An even stronger example is Batman himself. In some early issues of ''Detective Comics'', Batman himself would shoot criminals to death on a regular basis, until DC editorial director Whit Ellsworth asked the writers to tone it down and [[Lighter and Softer|make it kid-friendly]]. This sounds incredibly jarring to modern audiences because [[Thou Shalt Not Kill]] has been Batman's defining moral principle for so long, rendering this early facet of his character almost unbelievable.
***** Let's not forget that Batman killed a Russian gangster in those early, pulp fiction days. And I quote, "There is a sickening snap as the Cossack's neck breaks under the mighty pressure of The Batman's foot." The picture is easy enough to find if you do a quick image search on any decent search engine.
****** The Bat-Man's original attitude was [[Good Is Not Nice|"lawbreakers deserve whatever comes their way."]] In his debut, he threw a thug off a roof to his death and punched the mastermind through a railing into a vat of acid. Not just Batman, either. In Detective Comics #50, when Dick Grayson was about a dozen issues old, ''[[Batman
** ''The Killing Joke'' turns out to be one big subversion: Alan Moore has since gone on record saying that, in hindsight, DC editorial should have reigned him in on crippling Barbara Gordon but didn't. They may have actually gone along with it because they intended to remove Barbara altogether; if one former DC writer is to be believed, ''Batgirl Special #1'' retired Barbara as Batgirl so they could dispose of her entirely in some means like ''The Killing Joke''.
* [[Batgirl 2000 (Comic Book)|Cassandra Cain]] is an irritating example. Her [[Face Heel Turn]] was forced by the EiC, which is bad enough, but the story could've been salvaged ''if the writer of that story bothered to do any research about the character he was about to write at all!'' After [[Author's Saving Throw|the damage got a band aid]] it was decided that Cassandra'd get a new mini series of her own. It could've been good, but executives gave the job of writing that mini series ''to the same writer who flocked up her character to begin with.''
** Which also leads to some serious [[Fridge Logic]]: if Batgirl is able to beat Batman in a fight and Tim Drake could defeat Batgirl does that make Robin a better fighter than Batman? Also, how come they chose the one female member of the bat family (who still fights) to turn evil even though she has even less of a reason to than Batman himself?
** Along those same lines, [[Gail Simone]] has confirmed that her "Death Of Oracle" storyline in ''[[Birds of Prey]]'' was supposed to lead to Cassandra adopting a new identity and joining the team (partly to offset complaints about the [[Monochrome Casting]] in the series). She claims she even began writing Cass' debut issue before being told that Cassandra's return would instead be handled in [[Grant Morrison]]'s ''[[Grant Morrisons Batman|Batman Inc.]]'' title.
** Writer [[Scott Snyder]] has since mentioned that Cassandra was present in his script for the first issue of the ''[[New 52]]'' ''[[
** Let's be honest here: this is the "One More Day" of the DCU.
* Most of [[Dwayne McDuffie]]'s run on ''[[Justice League of America]]''. Despite writing what is supposedly DC's flagship title, issues he had to deal with include not being able to use ''any'' of the Big Seven, and having to constantly rewrite stories around the plots of other books. In one instance, McDuffie was informed that Hawkgirl was to be killed off in ''Final Crisis'', but at the last second was informed that she wouldn't die after all. The latter news came after a scene reacting to her death was both written and drawn.
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