Comics Cavern

Blackest Night is all that DC has been talking about for as long as I can remember now. They began hyping it immediately after the Countdown/Final Crisis debacle, they hyped it during the long prologue, and they’re hyping it as the story continues. Since the publisher has made it clear that Blackest Night is the single most important thing going on this year, the very axis on which the DC Universe spins, you’d think they might want to exercise a little quality control, particularly in the Green Lantern books.

You’d think. But if that were the case, Green Lantern Corps Editor Adam Schlagman would be out on his ass after letting this typo slip into the single most climatic panel in GLC #41:

Yes, spell checkers will tell you that vial is, in fact, a properly spelled word. It means a flask, or beaker, a physical container. An abomination is not a vial. An abomination is vile. The scene for which this entire book is written falls flat, and pulls the reader right out of their suspended disbelief that makes a story fun, when sloppy editing shows up and brings the whole affair crashing down to Earth.

Editing is more than using spell check. It’s nice to see your name in credits, but editing is, when done correctly, a slow, laborious, hard job requiring concentration and a willingness to at the very least READ THE COPY you are editing.

I’ve never met Adam Schlagman. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen DC’s editorial process in action. This may not be his fault. I, for one, have worked as an editor, and I have had the experience of moronic superiors “correcting” my work as it went to press, resulting in errors showing up under my aegis. Maybe that’s what happened here. The bottom line is that one or more people should have their professional asses handed to them for this. As a reader of one comic with one (glaring) error, this is not a life-changing event for me. But a publishing company that cares at all about quality control should consider this a huge deal.

Pardon the armchair editing, but if DC Editorial isn’t going to enforce high standards than it falls upon the consumers, the readers shelling out their hard-earned $2.99 or more per book, to ask them why.