One of our most popular news section posts recently was
"News for The Simpsons, Garfield & Friends, Batman: TAS, SuperFriends, Birds Of Prey...and BUFFY!?". It was a catch-all wrap-up of bits and pieces we had been getting info about, but didn't have studio confirmation on it yet. More than rumor but less than fact, at least in our minds at the time.
Although many of the items in there have been confirmed as coming by the studio, and less than a week after we posted that column, one item in particular has definately turned out to be "less than fact". That item is
Birds of Prey. So you don't have to run and check, here's what we said at the time:
While we're talking to Warner, we'll also check into reports from readers such as Bob F., who tells us that "The latest issue of Entertainment Weekly had a sidebar indicating that Birds of Prey will be released on DVD shortly with all 13 episodes." Great news, even if we couldn't track down an issue of the magazine to check it out for ourselves.
Note that we've taken Bob's complete last name out of the story. Other than that, this is exactly how we posted it on the first day. Also note that we stated up-front the fact that we hadn't verified Bob's claim personally. Yet almost immediately we started getting e-mails from folks who plainly took what we said as a fact.
It's great to know that our readers regard what we say with such integrity, and so it's with that integrity in mind that we report to you that Bob turned out to be wrong after all, and so were we along with him. Bob was hard to get for a few days, because he had gone on vacation, but when I got ahold of him he checked and told me "I was mistaken... the article I saw about the
Birds of Prey release on DVD was in the recent issue of
Wizard, not
Entertainment Weekly. I'm trying to get that scanned for you. Sorry for the confusion".
By that time, though, we had gotten multiple reports from readers about the
Wizard item. As it turns out it was an April Fool's Joke - something which Gord & I
don't especially enjoy, and for this very reason of it getting out-of-hand. Okay, stamp a big "sucker" sticker on my forehead. And Bob's too, because he missed the fact that it was a joke, and bought
Wizard's gag completely. Bob apologizes profusely, and we do as well.
Just to be sure that something wasn't really cooking, gag or no gag, we checked around. One place we checked in at was
GothamClockTower.com, where webmaster Craig Byrne keeps in touch with the
Birds of Prey team, and therefore he knows for a fact that there was no DVD coming. Craig is a good friend of ours, was one of the first to let us know about the
Wizard sidebar being a yukker.
Even still, it's best to go to the source, so we talked to Warner Home Video and checked out with them what the status was on a
Birds of Prey DVD release. Their answer was very very straighforward: "Birds of Prey (news) was definitely bogus."
And there you have it. Our apologies for getting everyone's hopes up. It's rare that we ever post news that is completely un-verified like that. When we do, we definately try to qualify it as a rumor or a grapevine-type item, and leave it crystal clear for our readers. This time, I slipped up by not saying it more clearly, and again of course for deciding to include it in the first place.
I'd also like to emphasize again that Bob is upset and apologetic too for getting taken in by
Wizard. After calling them a choice name or too, Bob's final comment about the magazine was "If I had a subscription I'd cancel it immediately." He's certainly as heartbroken as the rest of the
BoP fans...he wanted that DVD info to be true.
I'd like to thank Craig Byrne for being such a gentleman at his site, and for readers like Rikki Wear who helped us realize the full truth about the situation. Stay tuned, and hopefully one day we can bring you *real* news about DVDs of this fine but short-lived show.
