Does Disney not know how to choose authors? (Or are they hurting with selfimposed wounds?) -

[8777BB5]

While Chuck Wendig is the obvious example of not knowing who to pick, looking back over the history of Disney's work it seems like they have a hard time getting quality work from authors. Before Wendig there was the Kingdom Keepers series by Ridley Pearson which are largely forgettable, then there were the books based on the TGIF lineup that were bad even for that standard.

It's interesting that Disney's picturebook lineup doesn't suffer this fate but anytime they go for novel length you get awful characters mixed with bizarre ideas and stuff that would put a normal person to sleep. I do find it interesting that in both Wendig and Pearsons works the characters all seem to be from a checklist and the favored characters that do appear are oftentimes walked over by the new OCs.

 

[MarvinTheParanoidAndroid]

Disney's picturebook lineup

A subject matter not even Mr. Enter would bother with.

 

[The Shadow]

Quality is less important than hiring a fanboy who will work cheap because they're excited to be working on the dumb merchandise driven franchise they treat as a religion to sell copies to people that are going to buy it for the same reasons.

 

[PT 404]

Google Carl Barks and weep in despair.

 

[Y2K Baby]

Hire me, Disney. I'll be a mouse.

 

[Krokodil Overdose]

Cheap corporate tie-in products are garbage, volume ∞.

Honestly, I think the reason the Thrawn trilogy was so good was that there were no more movies, so it had to be a legitimate continuation of the story as opposed to just a cash grab made to piggyback off cookie-cutter blockbusters being produced in perpetuity.

 

[Regu]

Cheap corporate tie-in products are garbage, volume ∞.

Honestly, I think the reason the Thrawn trilogy was so good was that there were no more movies, so it had to be a legitimate continuation of the story as opposed to just a cash grab made to piggyback off cookie-cutter blockbusters being produced in perpetuity.

The Thrawn Trilogy was a product of dedication and was a loveletter to star wars made by an actual fan who wanted to leave a mark on the galaxy he had fallen in love with. Before Heir to the Empire the Expanded universe wasn't really a thing with only the novelizations and a couple of books. Zahn however knew that Star Wars deserved so much more and poured all his effort into what seemed like a franchise that would lie dead forever and turned it to something very alive.

Chuck Wendong on the other hand, sees Star Wars as a franchise that he can throw his messages into and live out his shitty fantasies. The mouse picked this hack for the same reason they ultimately canned Clone Wars for Rebels. They don't understand that you get out of a beloved franchise such as Star Wars what is put into it. If you put shit in you can hardly expect to make a profit.

 

[Cardenio]

I just checked Wingding’s Wikipedia and damn I love when you can just tell that the Wikipedia editor is clearly the subject himself.

___
Personal Life
He currently lives in Pennsylvania with his wife, her son from a previous relationship with a man named Darnell Brown, and two dogs.[48] He is credited with inventing a sandwich, called the Wendigo, that has spawned a sandwich cult around it.[49]
___

Wow invented a sandwhich. Man I wish I were Chuck’s wife’s son so I could try one of these famed Wendigo’s.

 

[Safir]

Quality is less important than hiring a fanboy who will work cheap because they're excited to be working on the dumb merchandise driven franchise they treat as a religion to sell copies to people that are going to buy it for the same reasons.

But WHY should cost be an issue? It's fucking Disney.

I don't buy the Comicgate narrative that comics are in decline because of SJW pandering. I think superhero comics are in decline because it's a dying medium, and pandering is a failing attempt to halt the decline by expanding into other demos, and partially (I hope) to bring in new talent and new ideas. Comics are cheap. Disney keeps writers are artists fed while they generate ideas (some of which may be shit), superfans pay for the privilege of testing these ideas, and then the good stuff is recycled in expensive-to-produce media for the general public.

But Star Wars is not that. Comics are character-driven, and they've endured generations of reboots, what-ifs, plot holes and retroactive spotfixes. Star Wars is a plot-driven story that had most of its continuity (by volume) wiped on account of allegedly being shit. Disney needed, effectively promised, to deliver an alternative stable continuity that would not be shit.

Plenty of talented people like Star Wars and would jump at the chance to write for it. And if your best person is not a fan, they're still a professional who can be bought. Get KJ Parker. Lynn Abbey. Ian Watson. Get George Martin if you must, it's not like he's busy. Put a couple of autistic fans in the room for your writer to bounce the ideas off, and later to comb through the manuscript looking for inconsistencies.

I liked TLJ. Sure, it was trash in most aspects I don't care about and a few I do. But a lot of it was genuinely good. I liked the First Order popping up just like that, the absence of wanking to lineages and backgrounds, Snoke dying like a bitch (even though I wanted to blow my brain out as the scene went on and on), Luke being a failure (I'd have preferred him to heroically die soon after ep. 6, but given they had to put Mark Hamill in the movie, this was the next best thing), the casino subplot with its anti-bougie message and some much needed planetside action. I liked the dangerhair woman - yay, female camaraderie!

Then it turns out the "female camaraderie" in question was most expressed by her trying to persuade Leia to try alien dick, like it was Bad Dragon product placement. Any interest in Star Wars as a story I used to have died there and then. I will not live long enough to see a reboot.

Why does this happen?
Like any "too big to fail" corporation, Disney is crippled by incompetence arising from a culture of corporate bootlicking and upper-middle-class navel-gazing. They don't know quality and they can't exert control; they harass licensees but are unwilling to curate a property's presentation internally.

Star Wars is such a notable failure because Disney had never managed a plot-driven property before. Their main artworks for the general audience are expensive (and profitable) standalone movies that are then milked through various transient tie-ins, series, direct to video sequels, etc. marketed directly to children with shit taste. The princesses hang out together in a happily-ever-after dimension. Maleficent has starred in like a dozen different continuities after her death in Sleeping Beauty 60 years ago, including as the hero of her own movie. If there's a book where Belle advises Elsa to go fuck a troll, no one would expect a sequel to Frozen to reference that (and Frozen is rare among Disney movies in that it gets a theatrical sequel at all), and as long as the book makes a profit, all is well.

With Star Wars, whatever you make, it goes right in. The franchise is radioactive now. Pour concrete on it, raise a red flag on the pump and leave it be for ten thousand years.

 

[Trilby]

Google Carl Barks and weep in despair.

Nobody could top him.

 

[The Shadow]

But WHY should cost be an issue? It's fucking Disney.

Because Disney likes money. Typically they make money by making the original product of noticeably high quality or appeal, and then making lots of secondary income stream products (your merchandise- t-shirts, toys, spinoffs) of varying quality given the concept that Nerds will buy anything with their favorite character or logo on it. They maximize this profit by producing it for a low cost, which is why the toys are made in China and not a master craftsman's shop in a quaint German village.

 

[Fagnacious D]

Google Carl Barks and weep in despair.

Okay.

Spoiler: I googled Carl Barks (NWS)

Duck Harem?

The old guy might be senile or just really high.

 

[Trilby]

Okay.

Spoiler: I googled Carl Barks (NWS)

Duck Harem?
View attachment 559970

The old guy might be senile or just really high.
View attachment 559971

He already stopped doing the comics by that point, so I would think he probably thought he deserved that retirement doing what he liked.

 

[Replicant Sasquatch]

Generally, talented and creative writers have more interesting projects to work on than licensed fan fiction. Dan Abraham and Ty Frank are too busy working on their original smash hit soace opera to give a shit about Star Wars