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Sunday, January 31, 2010

Reversal of kudos to DC - Ignoring errors

This probably matters to no one but me, but since I commended DC Comics a while back for  putting up an errata site to document and correct errors in their books (primarily credits, but other things as well), I wanted to note that they've not added any entries to the site since then, despite dozens of undocumented errors not yet included from earlier books, and many new ones since (with one egregious example).  So I guess it was a half-assed effort.  Not sure if that's better or worse than nothing at all, since having the site up there does sort of imply those are the only mistakes they're aware of.

The whole thing made me curious about why exactly they put the site up there, what one mistake tipped the balance to make them decide they needed the site, presumably letting someone throw up a quickly constructed list of errors (or maybe an existing internal list of corrections made or planned for new printings) to make the site look real and act as chaff for the error they had to acknowledge?

The ABSOLUTE SANDMAN errors are conspicuous, as it's a prestige project and it's always nice to stay on Neil Gaiman's good side, I guess, but those are fairly minor errors.  The big Kane/Moldoff correction on one book might have been it, but I know that same "error" exists in other books not corrected.

Then it jumped out at me:

Elric: The Making Of Sorcerer

  • Indicia is incorrect - trademark should be assigned to Michael Moorcock.

Should have been obvious, really.  They somehow flubbed properly acknowledging the owner of the character and story they were publishing, an actual legal requirement, and presumably recalling the whole print run and reprinting the book wasn't a feasible option.  Much cheaper to say they've got a site to cover stuff like that and hastily throw one up.

And no, I don't know that was the case, but it seems to make sense.

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