A fortnight ago, when I was writing my year-in-review column for Ninth Art, I got to the paragraph about DC. And I stopped, and asked myself: What have DC actually done in the last year that was interesting or newsworthy?

After some time pondering the question, I realised that I couldn't think of anything. This seemed strange, as surely DC must have done something in 2003. It is, after all, one of the biggest publishers in the market. But no, nothing was springing to mind. I finished off the column, and trudged off through the snow to a friend's house, to watch the final of POP IDOL.

Halfway down the road, I suddenly remembered. It had published BATMAN, which had been one of the biggest sellers of the year. And it had signed a lot of people to exclusive deals. I made a mental note to amend the column accordingly. I couldn't claim to find either of these things particularly interesting, but they had at least happened.

It surprises me how easily this can happen with DC. It's a permanent presence. It's never all that far from mind if you're thinking about the direct market regularly. Its output is solidly consistent. Some of DC's imprints - ABC, Vertigo, Eye Of The Storm - are generally rather good. And yet...

Somehow, it all faded into an overall sense of "business as usual". Of course, for DC, "business as usual" is a fairly respectable standard of quality. But, aside from the massive push given to BATMAN, not much really stood out as being out of the ordinary for DC last year.

'What have DC actually done in the last year that was interesting?' I remember once reading somebody's theory - I forget whose - that the difference between Marvel and DC is that Marvel has bursts of quality interspersed with bursts of dreadful rubbish. DC is just quietly consistent, and its superhero line is just quietly average. It publishes a wider range of genres, and it pushes stories Marvel would never touch with a ten-foot bargepole - but then, DC has been doing that for years, hasn't it? It's hardly news.

In fact, from a quick skim through my archives, it seems I haven't written a DC-specific column since last January. That one was about the Share The Risk programme, an attempt to encourage readers to order more copies of lower-selling titles by tying them to higher-selling books in order to qualify for partial returnability. I can't remember the last time I saw anyone mention Share The Risk, which is hardly surprising given that it didn't do wonders for SWEATSHOP or MUCHA LUCHA.

Clearly this won't do. Fortunately, DC has actually got a new project on the horizon for the spring. It's launching the DC Focus imprint.

DC Focus is a curious concept. Basically, it's four ongoing series set in a "realistic" world where there are superpowers, but no superheroes or supervillains. The tag line is "superpowers, not superheroes." Those of you with long memories for disasters may find this oddly familiar. That's because it's essentially the same concept as Marvel's 1986 flop, The New Universe. It was certainly the first thing that sprang to my mind when I heard about DC Focus.

Nor is it desperately encouraging to see from the DC Focus website that it's a "bold new take on reality-based comics" and, god help us, "gritty". Surely there's still a moratorium on describing comics as "gritty"?

'Intelligent, alternative comics for the discerning superhero reader?' That said, the actual comics sound more promising. Steve Gerber and Brian Hurtt are doing a prison series, HARD TIMES. John Francis Moore and Wesley Craig's TOUCH involves a man who sets himself up as an agent for superhumans. Both of these sounds quite good. The descriptions for Kelly Pluckett and Warren Pleece's KINETIC and David Tischman and Timothy Green's FRACTION make it rather hard to decipher the core concept. FRACTION involves a group of four people who steal a "power suit with incredible abilities". KINETIC is something about a sickly man who loves a superhero comic called KINETIC.

At first glance, KINETIC would seem to be trying to squeeze round the "no superheroes" rule. And if it's the real world save for the superpowers, it's a little odd that FRACTION seems to be diluting the concept from the word go by wheeling out the Kirbytech. They might be perfectly good comics, of course. But it makes me a little antsy if the creators are trying to sidestep the concept already, when the imprint hasn't even launched.

Still, the creative teams are decent. They sound like reasonably promising titles. And DC is clearly getting behind them - there's been plenty of publicity for them, with prominent listings in Previews, and excerpts in all the DC comics. DC seems to have faith in the project.

They'll need that level of backing, because DC Focus is going to be a tough sell. Completely new characters are never easy to market, and none of the creators involved are going to deliver huge audiences on name value alone. The obvious question is, who do DC expect to buy these comics?

'Eye Of The Storm launched with great publicity and proceeded to bomb.' They're not mature readers comics, which suggests a general audience. On the other hand, the references to grittiness and realism, and the involvement of writers like Gerber and Tischmann, suggest that the line is being pitched at a slightly more intellectual level than the mainstream DC line. Yet, however much DC stress that it's a no-superhero line, it's still a set of books involving superpowers. And, as the premise of KINETIC seems to acknowledge, it can't escape the shadow of the superhero genre. The moment you bring in superpowers as a key concept, you're aiming at the classic direct market audience.

Intelligent, alternative comics for the discerning superhero reader, then? But if that's the idea, then lurking in the background is the spectre of DC's existing mature superhero line, Eye Of The Storm. Eye Of The Storm was launched with great publicity and proceeded to bomb immediately. Of course, there are numerous reasons for that - the hopeless misjudgement of the WildStorm audience, the mess DC made of AUTHORITY, the ultra-niche appeal of titles like AUTOMATIC KAFKA. DC Focus is starting from scratch, which may perversely make it easier to attract the sort of audience it wants. Nonetheless, in sales terms, similar comics haven't done terribly well.

It's interesting that DC has chosen DC Focus as its main push at the moment. On the one hand, you've got to admire the nerve of giving so much effort to a clearly uphill fight - launching four completely new titles with no established fanbase at all. But then again, maybe DC has just got an extraordinarily optimistic view of the market. These look very much like titles whose primary appeal will be to the existing direct market audience (and even then, only a fairly small segment). Producing decent books for that audience is all well and good, so far as it goes. But it's a strangely marginal project to be getting quite so much attention.

Maybe those at DC see more commercial potential in these titles than I do - after all, they've had the advantage of reading them. Maybe they see film potential, or bookstore audiences (though western-style comics with superpowers hardly seem the best way to reach that market). Personally, I'm looking forward to reading the books. But then, I fall into a rather narrow demographic - the sort of people who read SLEEPER. That strikes me as the natural audience for these titles. They have the hallmarks of a line destined for critical acclaim and tiny sales.

DC must be seeing more than that, given the amount of promotion DC Focus has received. But from what we've seen so far, DC may be being optimistic.

Paul O'Brien is the author of the weekly X-AXIS comics review.

This article is Ideological Freeware. The author grants permission for its reproduction and redistribution by private individuals on condition that the author and source of the article are clearly shown, no charge is made, and the whole article is reproduced intact, including this notice.