A new poster for THE LOSERS was recently released, and it’s a striking recreation of artist Jock’s iconic poster and covers for the comic. With a lineup of comic book movie veterans, including Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Zoe Saldana, Chris Evans, Idris Elba, Columbus Short, Holt McCallany, Oscar Jaenada, Jason Patric, and Peter Macdissi, the film opens April 9. A new trailer has also been released:

Geoff Boucher at the LA Times, has an interview with director Sylvain White:

Do Marvel and DC really copy each other? It’s been noted that they seem to have a lot of ideas in common these days — Cap and Bats having similar seeming deaths and resurrections, similar zombie focused events followed by the dawning of new “lighty brighty” movements — Brightest Day and the Heroic Age. But is it really so? Over at Newsarama,
Troy Brownfield investigates the phenomenon in a piece called “From Blackest Night to Necrosha: Dispelling The Copycat Myth”, so you know he doesn’t quite buy i:

It happens every few months. A new storyline or new direction gets announced, and some fans will inevitably say something to the effect of, “Hey! Company M copied that from Company D!” or vice versa. Granted, there are probably going to be times at any level of entertainment when one story or real-life event inspires another. Several, even. However, there’s a certain point surrounding these kinds of assessments that fails to take one basic fact into account: it takes a loooong time from conception to execution before any issue of any comic hits the stands. We’re going to take a look at the notion of the Copycat Myth, including speaking with creators regarding their take on the idea.

Brownfield’s argument is that it takes so long to create a comic book – or God knows, an event — that such things can’t quickly be set in motion. Which makes sense as far as it goes. But then how do you explain this:

and this:

So you’re telling me that the new Avengers featuring Gorilla Man and the JLA featuring Congorilla is sheer coincidence? YOU expect me to believe that comic book writers love giant apes? Come on now. Next, you’ll be telling me they like Dr. Who.

Robot 6 had some good thoughts on the Heroic Age image by the way.

People have been wondering when DC would make some kind of move aimed at Marvel’s assault on their Lantern Ring promotion…and now they have. But instead of lashing out, they’ve done it in a, dare we say, grown up way — offering two new rings for an even LOWER order threshold on books that are already going to sell: they’re offering retailers Flash Rings with 10 copies of THE FLASH #1 and Green Lantern rings with 10 copies of GREEN LANTERN #53. Read between the lines of the following:

We swung by our very own Dan DiDio’s office to get his thoughts on the incentive, and he was happy to share.

“These rings are not only very cool, but they’re a big thank-you to our fans, who’ve helped make BLACKEST NIGHT a huge success. We’re hoping we can all keep the momentum going once the BLACKEST NIGHT ends and the BRIGHTEST DAY begins.”

Thanks, Dan! But there’s more. We gave Geoff Johns a quick call to get his thoughts. Geoff?

“One of the many great Flash Facts about DC Comics is that they actually do support the retailers with promotions like this that not only make our whole business a bit more fun, but also bring the promotion to every single reader. Of course, the proof is in the content and I couldn’t be prouder of the work Francis Manapul and I are doing on THE FLASH and Doug Mahnke and I are creating on GREEN LANTERN. Thanks to everyone, retailers and readers, for an amazing 2009 and here’s to an even better 2010!”

From the moment Marvel sent out its DC-tweaking press release late on Wednesday afternoon, Siege-for-Lanterns is Topic A at BarCon and in private chatter.

Why? Why did Marvel turn the clock back to 2001-2, when Nü Marvel under Bill Jemas and Joe Quesada delighted in playing Scut Farkus to DC’s Ralphie at every opportunity — calling DC AOL Comics, and so on. Jemas also delighted in getting hostile with retailers. But in 2010, things with Marvel seem so be going pretty smooth with that whole Disney thing and all, so why now? Why such an aggressive in your face move here and now?
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A LOT of comic book news is being announced this week, here’s a quick guide:

§ Paul Levitz will be writing not just the Legion in ADVENTURE COMICS, but a whole new Legion of Superheroes title:

Then you got to watch me do a bunch of terrible things to people! We killed characters in that time, we screwed around with their love lives… We had what might have been arguably the first extra-marital affair going on in mainstream superhero comics… All of those things provides you enormous ammunition as a writer. I lead off the new run by destroying the homeworld of one of the characters.

§ Likewise, Gail Simone and Ed Benes are relaunching BIRDS OF PREY:

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WHOA. Marvel has just announced that they will accept trade-ins of retailers’ unsold copies of Blackest Night tie-ins for copies of a Siege variant edition.

You read that right. Marvel will give you a copy of their event comics for the covers of unsold copies of DC’s event comics.

The DC comics involved were all part of DC’s Lantern ring promotion — retailers had to order Blackest Night tie-in books at high levels in order to get collectible Lantern rings. Some folks thought the levels were too high.

Our email and AIM are already lighting up with “WTF??!!??”

PR below:

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DC has announced their next big event, and since it follows BLACKEST NIGHT, it’s called…BRIGHTEST DAY!

However, the event started as PR guru Alex Segura’s longest day, as the Source blog teased a 6 AM wake up call from Dan DiDio to tell Alex all about:

BRIGHTEST DAY, a 26-issue bi-weekly series debuting in April written by…Geoff Johns and Peter Tomasi. The series will tie in with Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps and kick off with a #0 issue drawn by Fernando Pasarin.

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE. DiDio: “BRIGHTEST DAY isn’t just a single book. Like BLACKEST NIGHT, it’s an event that happens across the entire DC Universe, affecting a number of titles.” Whoa.

For instance, THE FLASH, by Johns and Francis Manapul, gets its own Brightest Day branding. And then there’s Brightest Day: Titans:

DD: TITANS is another series that will fall directly under BRIGHTEST DAY, with Eric Wallace and Fabrizio Fiorentino coming on board, starting with the TITANS: VILLAINS FOR HIRE SPECIAL and then the regular series. We loved the work the two of them did on INK, so we’re excited to see them build a new team of Titans, under the leadership of none other than Deathstroke, the Terminator.

And…Brightest Day: JLA with all new team members and so on .

DiDio and Segura will be chatting again at 3, so we’ll update accordingly.

3:00 update: In yet another completely natural, realistic and utterly unforced conversation, DiDio revealed that recent recruit David Finch will be the BRIGHTEST DAY cover artist.

Segura begged for more information, but was told he knew enough for one day.

Well, since we’ve discussed so much today, I don’t want to reveal everything about the BRIGHTEST DAY books just yet. But readers should tune in for the rest of the week for more news on BRIGHTEST DAY and the DC Universe in 2010, right here on The Source.

All sorts of mini news bits on various comics movie projects this morning.

¶ John Malkovich has replaced John C. Reilly in RED, the all-star adaptation of the Warren Ellis/Cully Hamner miniseries. Bruce Willis plays a retired black-ops agent who is too old for that shit and has a squad of younger-high tech assassins out to get him. These assassins must be so young that they never saw films such as the DIE HARD series, THE LAST BOY SCOUT, ARMAGEDDON, or SIN CITY, or else they would know going after Bruce Willis is a death sentence. Along for the ride, an Award-wørthy and mostly Medicaid-eligible cast, including Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, Mary-Louise Parker, Julian McMahon, Richard Dreyfuss, Ernest Borgnine, and Brian Cox.

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Gossip Girl hottie Blake Lively will play Carol Ferris in the upcoming GREEN LANTERN movie. Lively will star opposite Ryan Reynolds, making this some of the best looking casting ever in a superhero movie. The Martin Campbell-helmed film is set to open on June 17, 2011.

At 23, Lively will be the world’s youngest owner of an aerospace company, but who cares. She’s hot!

Rich Johnston scooped The Source by a few minutes with the news that Marvel event veteran David Finch (ULTIMATUM, AVENGERS DISASSEMBLED)has signed a two-year exclusive with DC. There he’ll write AND draw a big project of his own. Finch previously worked on a DC/Top Cow crossover but has never worked directly on a DC character., (The Batman sketch is from his own private sketchbook.) CBR does the entrance interview and detects genuine enthusiasm:

Another under-appreciated aspect of DC that Finch hopes to explore is the larger-than-life tone of DC stories, which can range from gritty detective tales to sci-fi superhero epics. “[That] really touches on the central appeal for me of the DCU. The setting for a story plays such a major part in the narrative, and being able to create in such vivid colors is very exciting. Buildings, cars and environments can be so much more over the top. They can be futuristic and bright, or dark and dirty with wild pipes and gargoyles, and any kind of mixture in between. There’s just so much more dramatic effect that I can get from such wild environments.”

Johnston paints this in a wider view of a return to the “exclusive wars” that pounded the Big Two back in the middle of the last decade.

Exclusive deals ensure that companies get the full use out of certain creators and prevent competitors from using them. In return, creators can gain higher page rates and guaranteed work for a period, as well as a number of employee benefits. There have been exclusive wars between Marvel and DC in the past, it looks like they be about to begin again.

It is likely that DC Comics Entertainment will paint this as part of the new direction of the company. Of late they have not been as aggressive about exclusive deals, but I understand this has changed considerably in recent months, with a number of Marvel creators telling me that they’ve been approached with some very enticing deals.

Spicing up the DC brand with some bright new acquisitions is definitely a good way to spark 2010.

by Marc-Oliver Frisch

Is DC’s November success made of plastic?

We’ll come back to that later. First things first: How much of a success is it, anyway? What’s clear is that, thanks to “Blackest Night,” DC Comics once again dominated the comic-book Top 10 in November. And, as it turns out, the company’s 7-of-10 win isn’t wholly cosmetic this time. At least the publisher’s average comic-book sales increased again — for the first time since July.

On the other hand, the gross dollar value of DC’s periodical output in the direct market fell to its lowest level since June. Both Blackest Night the miniseries and “Blackest Night” the crossover are a great success, but much of the rest of the DC Universe line is flagging.

Over at the Vertigo imprint, a new Fables spin-off debuted with solid numbers, bringing a slight increase to Vertigo’s average periodical sales. Average WildStorm sales saw another major crash in November, meanwhile, dropping to an estimated 7,111 — less than 300 copies ahead of WildStorm’s all-time low in January 2009.

See below for the details, and please consider the small print at the end of the column. Thanks to Milton Griepp and ICv2.com for the permission to use their figures. An overview of ICv2.com’s estimates can be found here.

—–

1 - BLACKEST NIGHT
07/2009: Blackest Night #1 of 8  -- 177,105          [199,863]
08/2009: Blackest Night #2 of 8  -- 146,092 (-17.5%) [155,512]
09/2009: Blackest Night #3 of 8  -- 140,786 (- 3.6%)
10/2009: Blackest Night #4 of 8  -- 137,169 (- 2.6%)
10/2009: Blackest Night #5 of 8  -- 144,935 (+ 5.7%)

2 - GREEN LANTERN
11/2004: Rebirth #2 of 6    --  86,273 [138,252]
11/2005: Green Lantern #5   --  92,348
11/2006: Green Lantern #14  --  72,894
11/2006: Green Lantern #15  --  70,148
11/2007: --
--------------------------------------
11/2008: --
12/2008: Green Lantern #36  --  64,755 (+ 2.2%) [ 74,005]
01/2009: Green Lantern #37  --  65,556 (+ 1.2%) [ 71,331]
02/2009: Green Lantern #38  --  68,908 (+ 5.1%) [ 77,372]
03/2009: --
04/2009: Green Lantern #39  --  79,792 (+15.8%) [ 84,784]
04/2009: Green Lantern #40  --  76,665 (- 3.9%) [ 84,705]
05/2009: Green Lantern #41  --  81,491 (+ 6.3%)
06/2009: Green Lantern #42  --  84,131 (+ 3.2%)
07/2009: Green Lantern #43  -- 109,426 (+30.1%) [117,314]
07/2009: Green Lantern #44  -- 105,063 (- 4.0%) [109,599]
08/2009: Green Lantern #45  -- 102,431 (- 2.5%)
09/2009: Green Lantern #46  -- 103,666 (+ 1.2%)
10/2009: Green Lantern #47  -- 101,349 (- 2.2%)
11/2009: Green Lantern #48  -- 100,371 (- 1.0%)
-----------------
6 months: + 23.2%
1 year  :  n.a.
2 years :  n.a.
5 years : + 16.3%

As usual, both Blackest Night and Green Lantern were promoted with 1-for-25 variant-cover editions in November.

For those of you just joining us, this means that comic-book retailers had to order 25 copies of the regular editions of Blackest Night #5 and Green Lantern #48 for every variant-cover edition. And, as usual, Blackest Night sales were also boosted with a rarer 1-for-100 variant edition.

So far, so simple, but now it gets complicated.

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At the Vertigo Graphic Content blog, covers for 2010 paperback editions of SANDMAN are unveiled. The new editions will include the recolored interiors from the ABSOLUTE SANDMAN series.

While DC reps remained mum about the price and format of the Earth One OGNs, they announced last week — such elements being important clues to the intended audience of said projects — Amazon was not as tightlipped, and the listing for EARTH ONE: SUPERMAN by JMS and Shane Davis reveals that it will be 128 pages for $19.99. JOKER-sized, as Robot 6 points out.

Collected Editions also runs the numbers and with a discount, an OGN would run you less than six issues of a $3.99 comic. THE JOKER is selling for $13.50 on Amazon right now.

Evidently, DC sees real growth potential in OGNs, as IGN learned that several licensed comics would be moving to that format, namely the WARCRAFT series, which started out gangbusters but fell prey to standard attrition as time went on.

Blizzard’s fantasy and futuristic universes are about to get shaken up, courtesy of a comic book revamp by DC’s Wildstorm Comics. Today the publisher announced it intends to refocus its efforts on a series of original graphic novels, cancelling its current ongoing series endeavors for both franchises.

“While WildStorm and Blizzard loved the stories being told in the regular monthly comic-book series, we decided that the graphic novel would be a more suitable medium for the tales we wanted to tell next,” said Hank Kanalz, VP & General Manager of Wildstorm. “The larger format will give our artists and storytellers more room to explore Blizzard’s rich, varied worlds and flesh out the characters that inhabit these places.”

WELL NOW. The plot thickens. The WARCRAFT issue currently on sale will be the last pamphlet; details of the book relaunch are forthcoming.

A couple of things strike us about all of this. Licensed, manga-sized books have sold pretty well at other publishers so this is surely a viable format. However those were in B&W and manga-sized, a proven formula. A $20 hardcover is another matter. The net effect of all these moves is to spotlight an implied doubt over the continued viability of the floppy at DC — we’ve heard a few rumblings that more and more Vertigo projects will be going straight to the trade, as well, and looking at the numbers that Vertigo and Wildstorm periodicals are selling, it makes sense to try another format.

In a larger sense, DC has been in a tiring holding pattern ever since 10 Days That Shook The World™. Until the new publisher or publisher/president lineup is announced, everything is on hold. That’s one-third of the whole year without forward motion, which can’t be pleasant for a lot of people. BUT jungle drums are saying there will be a publisher announcement early in 2010–which could be in the nick of time.

Related: Marc-Oliver has a summary of Joe Q’s continued resistance to the OGN:

[F]rom the financial standpoint of a commercial artist, if I’m looking for a way to maximize my time versus how much money I make versus how much exposure I get—an OGN doesn’t make sense. […] I could do a year’s worth of work and put it out as one graphic novel, and I’ll be on the stands in perpetuity (if it’s good) but promoted for really only one month. […] And that’ll boost my career for that month. The book will come out and sell to fewer people because I’ve had to put something like a $40 price point on it. […] And let’s not forget, what if the OGN isn’t all that good?

Again, we can certainly understand how the numbers run this way at Marvel but…are there NO STORIES IN THE WORLD OF MARVEL that could best be told in one shot? Is that idea completely alien to everything about the way Marvel works?

Developing.

This morning’s DC news reveal is the return of Bruce Wayne, who was Lost-ed into the time-flux during a big battle with Darkseid at the end of Final Crisis. Since then, Robin has been Batman and Batman’s stinky kid has been Robin. The real Bruce Wayne will return in April in a six-issue mini-series called, surprisingly, THE RETURN OF BRUCE WAYNE. Grant Morrison continues his well-received arc on the character, and artists involved include Chris Sprouse, who will draw the first, 38-page long story, and possibly Frazer Irving. Andy Kubert drew the concept art. Subsequent stories will be 30 pages long.

Morrison expands on his plans to hotel guests nationwide in an interview in USA Today:

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Over at Newsarama, Vaneta Rogers interviewed Gary Frank and Shane Davis, the artists on respectively, Batman and Superman for the new EARTH ONE line.

While Frank (his greatly Langella-esque Alfred above) was greatly motivated by the desire to work with writer Geoff Johns – “if Geoff said right now that he was writing his version of Arm-fall-off Boy, I’d be throwing my name in the hat for the pencils”– he was also frank about the future:

But, you know, I think DC just wants to try something different. Times are changing and comics don’t sell what they once did. Every few years you hear people talking again about how the industry is on it’s last legs and, while Hollywood has been good to us in recent years, no one knows how long that will last. There’s an awareness that we all need to adapt in some way and I’d personally prefer to go this way than digital. Call me a dinosaur but I like paper.

On the other hand, Davis was just plain scared shitless:
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Today’s big DC news story is WAR OF THE SUPERMEN, the big Superman event for 2010 everyone has been speculating over. James Robinson and Eddy Barrow kick things off with a Free Comic Book Day issue.

While surely notable, the announcement of a new crossover storyline has failed to ignite the website-crashing uproar that yesterday’s Earth One, aka “Ultimate DC” announcement did. And now the retailer perspective — via Brian Hibbs and Chris Butcher is coming in. If this were just another reboot, people might be a little interested, but the fact that it’s a GRAPHIC NOVEL LINE reboot is what has people sitting up.

Hibbs — a pamphlet man to the end — runs numbers and concludes that the revenue stream for an OGN series is less than the revenue stream for a periodical-to-collection model. Actually, it’s a little hard to argue with this — it’s the TV-series-to-DVD argument. Both delivery systems work, and make for two separate revenue streams. Yet no one releases long, complicated stories as a series of direct-to-DVDs. They do however release the occasional standalone story.

But on some matters, it seems to us, Hibbs misses the mark:

The bottom line is that customers are much less likely to plunk down for a Big Ticket item than they are for a periodical, which is one of the reasons that the OGN doesn’t, to my mind, make a ton of sense. And while it is possible that the “bookstore reader” will flock to superhero-OGN work… well, I kind of don’t think that will happen… and, even if it does, I have a hardish time picturing them wanting it again and again — because this theoretical 2x a year strategy IS a periodical, just much slower than usual.

Go into a bookstore and you see that book series are an extremely lucrative staple of the publishing world, albeit mostly, these days, for women and YA.

Now, we DON’T KNOW any of the business details of the Earth One books. Are they YA? Are they $9.99? Are they tankoubon? Or are they $30 deluxe packages? If the former, it’s a very, very different publishing model from the latter, and one that is a proven success — just not yet with superheroes.

Butcher comes at it from a slightly different angle, while also pointing out the lack of format information that would make this line’s target much clearer. Butcher offers informed speculation:

It’s pretty clear to me that DC is attempting to develop a continuity-light series of graphic novels featuring their core characters, to introduce new readers to their IP, and re-capture the attention of lapsed readers. They’re phrasing the move in terms that their existing, painfully hardcore readership can understand, like “new continuities”, in the hopes that the Direct Market-shopping fans of their IP will still support this new format, to give them a large non-returnable sales-base with which to expand their mass market sales. (As a refresher, book sales through comic stores are “non-returnable”, and 10,000 non returnable sales (my prediction) is a great base from which to set your print-run and distribute the work to the larger market, which can return unsold books for a full refund (and which sticks publishers with lots of unsold books).)

Hibbs’ post has a long and lively comment section which interested parties should read.

Bonus: J. Caleb Mozzocco speaks from a reader’s perspective.

DC is revamping its Big Two with new origins and new “Jump on in!” continuities. Again. But the twist this time? It’s in GRAPHIC NOVEL FORMAT, a marked shift away from the Wednesday crowd in a search to get new readers and a move towards DC’s long-rumored “Ultimization” of their core books.

Announced this morning on The Source blog, SUPERMAN: EARTH ONE and BATMAN: EARTH ONE kick off an ongoing series of original graphic novels featuring “their first years and earliest moments retold in a standalone, original graphic novel format, on a new earth with an all-new continuity.”

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by Marc-Oliver Frisch

Gotham, we have a problem.

The general consensus seems to be that DC Comics had a particularly great month in October, but that’s not quite true. Despite making a spectacle of the Top 300 chart by claiming — literally for the first time in ages — all of the Top 6 spots, sales of the average new DC comic book were actually down from September. In fact, DC’s October performance isn’t even in the Top 3 of the past twelve months, if you compare average sales or gross dollar value.

The main reason for that is easily spotted: While Blackest Night and its tie-ins keep performing well, the number of flagging franchises and tanking new projects is on the rise again. The Titans books, Outsiders, Justice League, Justice Society, Wonder Woman, Superman/Batman and the entire Superman line are all formerly strong properties that have been skidding down the charts for months and years now; missed opportunities like the failure to capitalize on high-profile creator J. Michael Straczynski don’t help matters. Alarmingly, even the Batman line, which saw a strong relaunch a few months back, is losing steam quickly.

The bleak picture continues through the publisher’s sublabels. For the first time in six months, average Vertigo figures dropped below 11K again in October. WildStorm saw a rare spike, meanwhile — thanks, largely, to the stoically consistent numbers of the Planetary epilogue issue, which brought sales of the average WildStorm periodical closer to 10,000 units than at any other point in the last ten months.

See below for the details, and please consider the small print at the end of the column. Thanks to Milton Griepp and ICv2.com for the permission to use their figures. An overview of ICv2.com’s estimates can be found here.

—–

1 - BLACKEST NIGHT
07/2009: Blackest Night #1 of 8  -- 177,105          [199,863]
08/2009: Blackest Night #2 of 8  -- 146,092 (-17.5%) [155,512]
09/2009: Blackest Night #3 of 8  -- 140,786 (- 3.6%)
10/2009: Blackest Night #4 of 8  -- 137,169 (- 2.6%)

DC’s big crossover storyline of the year remains the strongest performer in the comic-book direct market.

Blackest Night is promoted with some of the most aggressive variant-cover incentives we’ve seen to date: There’s a 1-for-250 variant for issue #1, a 1-for-200 variant for #2 and a 1-for-100 variant for each subsequent issue, all in addition to 1-for-25 variants.

But, while these variants no doubt distort the numbers, it’s worth pointing out that sales are also bottoming out very quickly — which is unusual for high-profile “event” titles, and especially for books with multiple gimmick covers.

Looking back at this time last year, Final Crisis #4 had just come out, and its charts looked like this:

FINAL CRISIS
05/2008: Final Crisis #1 of 7 -- 144,826          [166,641]
06/2008: Final Crisis #2 of 7 -- 126,082 (-12.9%) [134,116]
07/2008: --
08/2008: Final Crisis #3 of 7 -- 123,881 (- 1.8%)
09/2008: --
10/2008: Final Crisis #4 of 7 -- 115,666 (- 6.6%)

The raw numbers would suggest that Blackest Night is doing better than Final Crisis, but then again, those were much simpler times back then: Final Crisis was promoted with one 50/50 variant edition per issue, which seems positively restrained by today’s standards.

The big difference between the two, of course, is that Final Crisis was up against Marvel’s Secret Invasion, which outsold it by up to a 100,000 units per issue. This time around, the closest thing Marvel has to a direct rival is Reborn, whose sales aren’t quite as spectacular; Reborn #1 outperformed Blackest Night #1 by about 15,000 units, but with September’s issue #3, the book dropped to 108K, which is significantly below Blackest Night. (Reborn didn’t ship in October.)

It remains to be seen whether Marvel’s upcoming Siege series and its tie-in books will come close to the commercial achievement of Secret Invasion. For now, Blackest Night appears to be as much of a success as the direct market is able to produce at this time.
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Beat pal Robert Simpson saw our post on comics surveys and was inspired to recall comics reader surveys of the past. DC Comics surveyed their readers in both 1970 and 1978 — possibly confounded by the emerging youth market and Marvel’s much higher Q. Both are archived online.

The 1970 survey from Comics Treadmill, with the immortal Superman quote “Let’s rap!”.

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• Despite a 70 percent drop-off, TWILIGHT stayed atop the Thanksgiving box office. But it got some competition from a film where Sandra Bullock mentors an offensive tackle, proving that teaming up somebody small and cute with somebody big and scary (but likable) still works!

• The first official photos from THE LOSERS have been released!

Sexy, aloof, multiethnic team of tough guys? Check.

Hot chick in a lacy tank top? With guns? Double Check! Sign us up.

• Codpiece alert! EW has revealed stills from an episdoe of Smallville that features Doctor Fate, Stargirl, Hawkman, and Green Arrow.

It is definitely a comfort to us that we live in a day and age when television producers take the time and effort to make sure that a Dr. Fate costume doesn’t look stupid when worn by a real actor.