I am opinionated

There are times I have opinions about comics and the comics industry that I keep to myself because I'm worried that it will start flame wars, or have people think I'm a complete ass-clown. Still, here are a couple of my comic bopok related opinions:

1) I was reading through one of the "DC Nation" articles from the last week or so, and saw just how much time, effort and money DC said they were putting into their new talent initiative. This comes after reading Joey Q's reveal this week about how and why Epic died, and I thought to myself:

Why do the big companies waste their time with searching for new talent?

The ONLY person I can think of who came into one of the Big 2 from a New Talent initiative was Mark Bagley, and that was almost 25 years ago. Most of the talent in comics started in indy books, self-publishing or smaller publishers where they showed they could produce professional work and were hired by DC or Marvel for things. Kirkman? from Image. Bendis? from Calibur and Image. Morrison and the the bother Brits? 2000 AD.

I'd love to be proven wrong, but for all the time, money and effort put into the slush piles and convention reviews, I can't think of anyone who came up through that method who has lasted and made a big career at DC or Marvel. Yeah, the smaller publishers have gotten people that way, but there is a part of me that wishes that DC and Marvel woudl free up the editors and other working on digging through the slush pile to work with their creators they have NOW to hewlp them get books done on time, learn how to be a professional and how to do better storytelling.

2) I wish I could enjoy John Byrne's work, but he's become just a jerk that I don't think I can separate him from his work. When he got into comics, I would ignore his public statements like "I am the new Jack Kirby" and "We talk about creator's rights, but what about creator's wrongs" because his work was so good.

I can't any more. His work HASN'T been good, and his last few comics seem like his tendency to base his stories on "I dislike this creator, so I will undo everything he's done" rather than telling a good story. His Demon series existed for the sole purpose of undoing what Alan Moore did with the character back in 1983, and his Doom Patrol was 18 issues of "FU Grant Morrison"...and I won't even get into his insanely continuity busting Wonder Woman run. His personal issues have become the only thing that drives his comics work. And now that he is fleecing the people on his Forum (charging $3000 for a bad sketch where he can't even get the number of fingers on character correct is worse than what Bolland did, IMHO) as he waits for regime change at Marvel and DC, rather than putting his creativity where his mouth is and making new series for an Indy publisher makes it so I don't care what he does in comics ever again.

Yeah, I'll reread his FF and Superman runs, but if he comes back to those books, I'd drop them like hot rocks, because I'd have to read stories showing how Chris Claremont's run on FF never happened or undoing everything Dan Jurgens did on Superman instead of telling a new story.

So...do YOU have any opinions you've been scared to let fly?