It’s New York Comic Con, and there’s simply not enough room in this column’s structure to cover all the news. But, we will do our best as we explore ten things I liked or didn’t like from the week of comics, led by…so much news!

1. DC Comics, On the Go

It seems DC’s continuing its push into the present (or even future) of comics, as it launched a couple different initiatives this week that intrigued for different reasons (and to varying degrees). First is the one that was by far the most interesting. That was the announcement of DC GO!, a pet project of DC’s Global Publishing Innovation group editor, Katie Kubert. On the surface, it feels like DC copying Marvel. It’s DC publishing original comics on its all-you-can-eat digital app DC Universe Infinite that are vertical scroll, which Marvel did as well with its Infinity Comics line on Marvel Unlimited.

But it’s slightly different.

One reason for that is instead of hiring comic creators with floppy origins to adapt to the vertical scroll format, DC hired Webtoon vets in CRC Payne, Siobhan Chiffon, and Cathy Lee to create the first comic in the honestly glorious sounding Harley Quinn in Paradise, a series about Harley becoming a contestant on a dating reality show after she breaks up with The Joker. That’s amazing sounding, and getting folks who already speak the language to make it work is a fantastic idea.

Also, each of the concepts — that Harley story, the incredibly titled Nothing Butt Nightwing (not a typo, it’s about Dick Grayson as a supermodel), and Renaissance of Raven (a gothic fantasy with some young adult love twists) — mesh well with the audience of this format, so it’s just smartly done. If you’re going to try and speak another language, try and do it right. And vertical scroll is a different language. Also, DC gets bonus points because it’s adapting existing comics to the format as part of this initiative, starting with Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee’s Batman: Hush. I know that’s opposes what I just said, but it’s the first time one of the Big Two has done this (note: After publishing, Brandon Schatz from Variant Edition Graphic Novels & Comics noted that Marvel had done this with a couple comics, they just didn’t push it, so DC is not first, it seems!), and I find it intriguing. But I find this all intriguing, even if I suspect that these would have popped more on Webtoon itself like with Marvel’s similar effort.

In news that I was considerably less high on that others have been, it seems, DC’s also putting its comics on the digital comics platform GlobalComix. Or, I should say, some of its comics, as only around 100 series are being included, many of which are kind of random! More than that, these titles are just going to be regular, run of the mill digital comics and not part of GlobalComix efforts to convert standard comics into vertical scroll ones, or at least not yet. This strikes me as a much bigger deal for GlobalComix — who gets the surge of legitimacy and attention that comes with adding on of the Big Two — than DC. Anyone who wants to read DC digitally can already do so on DC Universe Infinite.

But I do like the attention DC is putting on doing different things of late. It seems they’re being pretty forward thinking and trying out new tactics, and while they won’t all hit, some of them might. That makes them worth trying. More experimentation, I say!

2. Marvel, Going Compact-Ish

Marvel announced its “Don’t call it Compact Comics!” line this week with its new Marvel Premier Collection, and it’s a good effort even if they don’t get full credit for a number of reasons. The good thing is they’re doing it, which is really the big win of it all. They’ve also made some quality selections in the initial quartet with Daredevil: Born Again, Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and Fantastic Four: Solve Everything. More than that, each is a sizable chunk of comics, with eight, 12, 13, and an almost preposterous 19 for the Hickman Era FF book (I assume that book will actually be a cube in shape). Those are all good things, even if none of them are complete stories beyond Born Again.

My other notes aren’t bad things. They’re just very Marvel things. To me, DC Compact Comics laid out a nice playbook to follow. Make your books 5.5″x8.5″, charge $9.99 for said books, and then profit. Bingo bango. It’s that simple. So, Marvel of course made their books 6″x9″ and are charging $14.99 for them. Which is fine. $14.99 for 19 issues of an amazing Fantastic Four run is a great deal, and Image has proven that the 6″x9″ size works well with its Invincible digest and the soon-to-launch Saga ones (although they wisely charged $12.99 and $9.99 for the first volumes respectively). This can work, even if I also wish the cover designs felt a bit fresher.

Ultimately, these books are a nice effort, and I suspect they’ll do well enough. But as with many things at Marvel, it just feels less exciting than it maybe could have.

I will say, though, that I saw some folks pointing to the Mighty Marvel Masterworks line of similarly sized releases as proof that Marvel was already doing a program like this or even the Compact Comics line. But I think that suggestion misses one of the key points of what makes this idea work. The Mighty Marvel Masterworks are cool, but they collect chunks of titles from the beginning of each’s run, something that’s a pretty hit or miss experience for modern readers. The Marvel Premier Collection, on the other hand, is collecting great stories that work for new readers, just like DC Compact Comics do. It’s curation versus chronological collection, and from a sales standpoint, it’s much more appealing. So, they’re similar, but this Premier Collection has a far better sales hook to it for readers.