I’m really tired of all the various editions that get published to fleece comic book readers, and that try to make a buck off prospective ‘collectors.’ Look at this one, for example – the issue for which this claims to be a ‘Director’s Cut’ was barely released last month, and already we have a ‘director’s cut’! First of all, comics don’t even have directors! They have writers, artists, and editors, and the ‘direction’ either happens as a collaboration between writer and artist or – in the case of the ‘marvel method’ – is mostly done by the artist from the plot prepared by the writer. This kind of thing has become regular, and the bigger the comic book, the more ridiculous the various editions become. Witness the Watchmen ‘Noir’ that DC published a while back to further capitalize on the Watchmen franchise and in a way that I’m absolutely positive that author Alan Moore found completely repulsive.
The whole thing is also disingenuous; a ‘director’s cut’ in movies initially signified that a studio had essentially raped a director’s vision of a movie and crafted its own ‘commercially viable’ cut of a movie, often shorter and with more bang per minute than the deliberative pacing that a director might have preferred. So what does this mean in a comic book context? That the writer hated the edition that Marvel or DC first published? That THIS is what he wanted all along?
No, it’s just another money grab, and it’s gone way beyond the bounds of decency. It’s right down there in the disgusting comic book ghetto where it belongs with the ten zillion variant covers they now publish for every goddamned comic book on the face of the planet, as though they’re trying to turn every single comic book into bait for people who think they’re buying a collector’s item.
Puke.
