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#1 DC to Reboot Main Line
Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2011 2:45 pm
by Hotfoot
It's not Elseworlds, it's not a major crossover event, at least that's what they're saying:
USA Today wrote:DC Comics ready for
a risky yet relevant publishing change
By Brian Truitt, USA TODAYPosted 19h 33m ago | 36 | 10
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As excited as Dan DiDio is about DC Comics' newest initiative, the company's co-publisher knows he can walk the hallways of the DC Comics offices in Manhattan and pick up the same vibe from his co-workers.
"If we can convince the people here we're doing something brand-new and fresh, we have a good chance to really get the people outside on board," DiDio says.
DC will re-number its entire line of superhero titles, beginning with all-new No. 1 issues starting Aug. 31 — 52 in all, including a new Justice League No. 1. Fittingly, the publisher put its creative superteam on its trademark superhero superteam.
Guided by writer Geoff Johns and artist Jim Lee, Justice League will begin its first year with an updated secret origin reflecting DC's new initiative, giving the group a reason for coming together that it lacked when the league first appeared in 1960. And while it will ultimately boast 14 members, at its core will be DC's A-list do-gooders: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Green Lantern and Aquaman.
MORE:DC Comics unleashes a new universe of superheroes
"The approach is very much about who they are behind the masks and how they interact together and how these personalities mix," explains Johns, DC Entertainment's chief creative officer. "With the world's greatest superheroes, how does that team actually work? Do they all get along? Being able to pull together and see how that relationship is forged and continues to grow has to be at the heart of that book."
For Lee, working on a team book is a different experience than a Superman or Batman, both of which he illustrated in recent years.
"When you have a Green Lantern mixing with a foil like Batman, you get scenes that are comic-book history. There's the epicness of it all. You're dealing with iconic characters and you want to give them all equal grandeur and weight."
In the rollout of the revamped DC Universe, some titles will return, a lot of titles won't, and DC will have a wider range of books starting in September, DiDio says. In addition, three-quarters of the creative teams will be shuffled around — series that are successful and writer/artist combinations that work well together won't be tweaked too much, he says.
"We've got a new set of creators coming in with new voices in the DC Universe," DiDio says. "We really want to bring a new energy and excitement to our books."
The characters also are getting a makeover. While most of the specifics are still top secret, Lee says he worked with both staff and freelance artists to redesign costumes in a contemporary way as well as alter the physicality of many heroes and villains to modernize the DC Universe.
"You're trying to have your cake and eat it, too," Lee says. "You're trying to keep the iconic elements there, but at the same time freshen up the look so that people are intrigued by what they're seeing and hopefully come and sample the wares."
The recent emphasis on diverse characters such as lesbian superheroine Batwoman, Hispanic hero Blue Beetle and African-American adventurer Cyborg (who will be a core member of Johns and Lee's new Justice League) also will continue.
"He's a character I really see as the modern-day, 21st-century superhero," Johns says of Cyborg. "He represents all of us in a lot of ways. If we have a cellphone and we're texting on it, we are a cyborg — that's what a cyborg is, using technology as an extension of ourselves."
There will also be a lot of diversity in the products as well, DiDio promises. "It's not just about straight superhero characters and stories. We're going to use war comics, we have stories set in mystery and horror, we've got Westerns."
While Lee allows that this kind of wholesale change is risky for DC, it's far more perilous to play it safe and not periodically examine these characters and how they relate to the readership.
"It's part of our jobs to make sure that these characters stay dynamic and relevant," Lee says. "And that's what drove us on a creative level to make these kinds of changes."
To say this is a risky move is an understatement. On the upside, it might get me reading comics again because of a more solid move to digital distribution.
But let's face it, comics in general, and DC especially, have some really spotty records. It's a dangerous balancing act, trying to keep your existing fanbase happy while appealing to new customers. Marvel's been beating DC left, right, and center in the movies, but in the books, I have no idea. Both companies seem to be prone to stupid moves that alienate the fanbase. One More Day, Countdown, Ultimatum, etc. That said, there are still good books and stories coming out of both companies, but where to start? Marvel has over forty years of continuity, and DC has, arguably, over sixty! Getting a fresh start isn't a bad idea, it did wonders for the DCAU.
But...DC has disappointed a lot lately. Killing off heroes to bring back cheesy silver age versions that the fans aren't fond of (but the editors are), doing character assassinations on much beloved characters, and so forth.
And all the stories that have been building up in the current DCU? Gone. Just gone. Batman Inc? Goodbye. Web 2.0? Later. Secret Six? Ooooh man.
That alone is going to put off a lot of existing fans, never mind the costume changes to Superman (and would it KILL them to make a Wonder Woman costume that doesn't require double-sided tape of the gods for her to walk around in? Really? They've done it before and made it look awesome.) Never mind that they way they're ushering it in is by a big crossover event where the Flash is the only one that knows that history is wrong, Wonder Woman has conquered most of the world, and is battling Aquaman for domination of the sea, while dealing with pesky revolutionaries.
But, hey, they're keeping Jaime.
That's something, at least.
Ugh, honestly, there's a part of me that's just thinking this is just going to be a multi-year experiment before reverting back to the old timeline and saying "fuck it". The guys in charge these days don't seem to have the dedication and drive to stick to a massive, earth-shattering change like Crisis on Infinite Earths. Something that's shown by them trying to bring the DCU back to pre-crisis days.
I'm interested in how this all plays out, but I really wish that they had done something like the Ultimates instead, give a creative team a new universe to play with, let them do their thing alongside the usual nonsense, and go from there, but that's crazy talk, I know.
Well, get ready folks. Lots of bloody, pointless deaths coming up, I'm sure.
#2
Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2011 7:44 pm
by frigidmagi
Honestly I thought DC was making better comics until they got this outright strange silver age fetish. Some of it I would even back like bringing back the Legion of Super Heroes (look they're from the distant future so it doesn't impact any of the standing lines and it was an interesting team, leave me alone). My best guess is the editors were so intent on "bringing back the good days" that they forgot about their audience (most of us, or least most of the readers I know, don't want the silver age back). The added implication that they were "white washing" the DC universe certainly didn't help! Marvel's editors however are ahead in the sheer violence they're doing to characters in an insane effort to turn back the clock to their childhood, modern readers be damned (QUESADA, YOU ARE A HACK!) ... Not that I'm bitter or anything.
Frankly Jamie is the better blue beetle and the one we should keep (he's a Hispanic kid who through sheer character converts an alien war machine on the good guy team, that's fucking awesome) just as an example. And if they don't keep Static, shit is on.
If anything I think we should look at this as an educational experience. Editors and writers should realize that when writing characters that they can't turn back the clock without alienating younger audiences and causing fan uproar. To be blunt you can't go back again and backwards is the wrong way to go when telling a story anyways. The writers who are the best in the industry are the ones capable of accepting where the characters are and moving them forward instead of using the characters to try and recapture their youth. In short, if anyone reading this becomes a writer for a comic book company later on in life... Suck it up, Grow up and move forward, not backward. New ground is better ground.
As to the reboot...
When talking to people about comics the decades worth of backstory actually has a negative effect, with people not wanting to make that investment to get in. Of course in this age learning the background is a simple goggle search so we have easy compared to new fans in the 80s or even the 90s. Maybe a reboot is a good idea BUT it's going to depend on how you do it. I don't want to see despised and cowardly Clark Kent reappear and frankly I'm unhappy with the idea of giving up the Lois/Clark marriage (I've found after one more day I've gotten damn protective of fictional marriages, go figure). I also don't want to give up Nightwing, Birds of Prey or all the legacy heroes which have been a big thing for me in DC.
Still, I'll give them a shot.
#3
Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2011 8:12 pm
by Batman
As I said over at SDN, I can see the want to get rid of some 75 years over dozens of titles of backlog you need to take into account (or maybe not depending on what has been written in and out and back in only not quite).
I just don't see it working.
1.) You go whole hog. Everything is redo from start.
Congratulations. You just lost pretty much your entire established fan base.
2.) You keep parts of the established continuity. Which is what resulted in the mess that IS the established continuity.
Personally, as I seriously doubt they have the guts to do a real reboot, I think their best bet would be to establish a backstory (I've actually been Batman for quite a while, possibly introducing Robin as a returning player, Clark is Superman, Jay/Barry/Wally has been the Flash for quite a while, and so on) where superherodom has been a going concern for a few years without actually going into the details.
#4
Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2011 11:07 pm
by frigidmagi
Well here's the thing bats, if they start over, they lose a shitton of characters.
Starfire? Gone.
Nightwing? Gone.
Powergirl? Gone.
Liberty Bell? Gone.
Hour Man? Gone.
Raven? Gone.
Batgirl/Batwomen? Gone.
I can in fact, keep going.
That's a hell of a trigger to pull isn't it? I mean you have a chance, A CHANCE! That you'll pull in a new, bigger, happier audience, but what if you don't?
Still let's see how they do it.
#5
Posted: Thu Jun 02, 2011 2:43 am
by Cynical Cat
On the plus side, many of those characters can return. Power Girl's history is ludicrous and embarrassing, but the character is viable and very cool when well written. Wiping her slate clean is doing her a huge favor.
#6
Posted: Thu Jun 02, 2011 3:03 pm
by Hotfoot
Many characters will be returning, I'm not sure how much of a time rewind this is.
On the digital side of things, same-day releases of the digital copies will be the same price as the physical copies. Four weeks after release, they will drop by $1 US. That's 2.99/1.99 for normal books, and 3.99/2.99 for over-sized books. No word on trades, but such is life.
Power Girl I'd love to see with a more sensible background, but logistically it's difficult to do her and Supergirl in the same continuity, since they are supposed to be the same person from different realities.
#7
Posted: Thu Jun 02, 2011 9:55 pm
by frigidmagi
I'm just gonna throw this out here... Some of us, just a couple mind you... Have more then one cousin. Besides, at this point having Supergirl be alot younger then both of them has worked out really well (honestly I like the new supergirl when they're not doing stupid shit like Darkseid making her evil).
Hell I can come up with 4 or 5 different ways to do this. And that's without touching time travel or clones, both of which are scary black arts when it comes to characters for me (although I've done some really fun stuff in the past with both).
#8
Posted: Fri Jun 03, 2011 3:35 am
by Batman
I'm not sure if I like the idea of
both of them being Clark's cousins (though you're certainly right about people having more than one).
Assuming we
do want to bring Karen back (I only know her from guest appearances so I don't really don't care all that much either way, though she seemed OK enough when she showed up), does she
have to have an elaborate background? Just leave her past a mystery, even to herself.
And in Valen's name
please no young Kal-El as Superboy.
#9
Posted: Fri Jun 03, 2011 3:41 pm
by Hotfoot
Frankly, I just hope they tone down the Superfam power level to, say, DC Animated levels. However, given the current love affair with the Silver Age, I doubt that's likely.
Can we at least ditch the damn super-pets? Seriously? Why did they bring back Krypto?
Ugh.
#10
Posted: Fri Jun 03, 2011 4:20 pm
by Batman
Because Krypto was Silver Age, and everything Silver Age is obviously superior by definition, dummy.
And while I happen to agree downscaling the Clark level guys to Timmverse levels would do a lot to eliminate a lot of the problems with them, seriously, the Byrne reboot was already way beyond that (however timid it may have looked compared to the Silver Age), how long do you think something like that would last?
If people at DC were smart enough to realize something like this the current universe wouldn't be the mess it is to begin with.
#11
Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2011 11:02 am
by Hotfoot
According to what I'm reading now through the blagosphere, the DCnU (the reboot universe) will contain a great deal of history from the old universe, including the Killing Joke, Identity Crisis, Blackest Night, and so on.
And yes, the Killing Joke was specifically mentioned. How this works with Babs being Batgirl again d0esn't particularly make sense, unless you factor in the Internet 3.0 thing.
Of course, the fact that Red Hood still exists, Dick is Nightwing, Tim is Red Robin, and Damian is Robin still makes the whole thing a bit of a wtf, but it looks like Cass, Steph, and the Birds are getting hosed, Kate is finally getting her book out, but I have no idea what that will entail. Blue Beetle coming back is nice, but it looks like it's without the original writer, which is sad.
Right now the only two books in the starting solicit that look of particular interest to me are Fury of Firestorm and Batgirl, and that's only because Gail Simone is responsible for them. Not that the other books won't or can't be good, but she's the only creator I'm familiar with aside from Dan Jurgens (and okay, yeah, JLI might be on that list too).
#12
Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2011 11:26 am
by frigidmagi
At this point it's looking like less and less of a reboot and more of a gimmick.
#13
Posted: Thu Jun 16, 2011 7:46 pm
by Hotfoot
Aaaaand despite the fact that they're supposedly keeping huge elements of the previous universe, Didio indicates that Superman might be getting the One More Day treatment.
Quoth Samuel L. Jackson, "Hold on to your butts."
#14
Posted: Thu Jun 16, 2011 11:56 pm
by frigidmagi
Why are comic book editors anti-marriage?
#15
Posted: Fri Jun 17, 2011 3:13 pm
by Steve
In Quesada's case, it's been joked to be his semi-Oedipal complex and loving mothers more than wives, but more likely he genuinely believed that the marriage to Mary Jane made Spidey less relatable to young readers.
In Didio's case, it might actually be a business decision; DC is losing the rights to the Superman origin comics to the estate of Siegel, including the character of Lois and her love "triangle" with Clark and Superman.
#16
Posted: Fri Jun 17, 2011 10:35 pm
by Hotfoot
Yeah, but they lose so much more in that case, including the character of Clark Kent.
Then you add in the fact that, supposedly, the DCnU is supposed to be Year 5, not Year 1 or Year 20, and yet we still have Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, and Time Drake as proteges of Batman.
This reboot is making less and less sense as we go.
#17
Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2011 12:26 pm
by Steve
Yeah, they want to have their cake and eat it too, and it's going to end up a mess.
#18
Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2011 3:06 pm
by Batman
End up? The way things look so far this is going to start out a mess, and I very much doubt it's going to get any better after that.
#19
Posted: Tue Sep 27, 2011 1:15 pm
by Hotfoot
So we're a few weeks into the DCnU, and so far, the fail is pretty high. There are some high points, Batgirl, Batwoman, Birds of Prey, and a few others are supposedly pretty good.
But good lord the fail.
Batman's moving on from his parents deaths and is now relatively well adjusted. Superman is acting like Batman. Superboy is all kinds of fucked up (and has the hots for Rose Wilson, hooray). Power Girl and Mister Terrific are fuckbuddies. Mister Terrific is a "Hollywood Atheist". People hate and fear superheroes in general, but that's not even the really bad shit yet.
Blue Beetle has been COMPLETELY RESET, despite his origin stories still technically being canon. Now he's an angsty teen who keeps his identity secret from his family and friends. And we have to go through the entire Reach arc all over again.
Man, I get rebooting characters that have been around for thirty years, I get it, really. Stories get dated, confusing, and overly complex. Starting fresh can be good.
But Blue Beetle was already fresh. He's not even ten years old, I'm not sure he's even five years old. He was one of the biggest breaths of fresh air DC had. He was light-hearted, the interactions between himself, his friends, and his family were golden. He was a new take on the teenaged superhero concept and it was wonderfully done.
Now? It's just another retread of the spider-man concept. High school kid gets powers from a crazy science bug. Power and responsibility. Blah blah blah.
That's still not the worst so far.
The worst so far has to be the character assassination of Starfire. In the old DCU, she was a free-loving alien in the sense that she was uninhibited with expressing her emotions. She had a long relationship with Dick Grayson that affected both of their characters profoundly (hell, they nearly got married). In the new DCU? All that stuff? Yeah, it happened, but Starfire's an alien who doesn't really remember individuals. Yeah, her whole species is like that, apparently. She's now a device that both Jason Todd and Roy Harper can high five over while having sex with her, because now, sex is just a meaningless pleasurable act for her that has nothing to do with love.
Oh yeah, and in the first draft, her bikini was see-through. Classy, DC. Classy.
Oh, and Catwoman basically rapes Batman.
Good job reaching out to new demographics, DC. Really ace.
#20
Posted: Tue Sep 27, 2011 1:42 pm
by frigidmagi
There's been a stiff defense of Starfire by mostly what appears to be straight males decrying any criticism as "slut shaming" (to be honest I'm not to clear on this, what is slut shaming? Am I not suppose to call out people on infidelity anymore or something?).
This defense... Misses the point. Starfire has written in reboot (relaunch? renumbering? I mean this ain't no reboot!) isn't experimenting with feminine sexuality or anything that deep. She is serving as a vehicle for male fantasy and... has had everything else pretty stripped out of her character. She no longer has any emotional bonds (claiming not to remember the Titans! She fought, loved and bled with these people for years! and watched some of them die! WHAT THE FUCK!) She is a now a pretty girl who will dress in scanty clothes and fuck you. And then you can move on because she won't care.
All the emotion is gone, ripped from this character. Considering that she was an emotional person (as opposed to Raven who avoided emotion out of fear... you know... of starting Armageddon) who was driven by loyalty, affection and love to point her life on the line repeatedly for a planet that wasn't even hers and like many of her closest friends would never get the credit she deserved for her actions. That's gone folks. There is none of that here. Nothing. She's bunking up with the fucking Red Hood! The guy who has tried to kill Dick Greyson more times then I have sat on my ass and gobbled rocky road icecream! And since that's my favorite ice cream favor from childhood, we're not talking low numbers peoples.
Mr. Terrific and Power Girl don't bother me as much (although from what I read she seemed closer to Dr. Midnight and she doesn't seem the type for causal fuck buddiness but mileage may vary) since there's a preexisting relationship there. They've been friends and members of the same unit for years. I'm not gonna say co-workers because frankly that doesn't begin the cover the relation you have with people you risk your life with and go into combat with. There's an argument for this that makes sense, even if I don't necessary completely agree. Although, man... I'm a practicing Christian and I'm saying... Can we get more then 2 kinds of atheists? This is getting sad, although I'm still kinda butthurt about how every Christian in the comic verse is either a drooling zealot who can barely tie their shoes, the super goody two shoes or someone who is only Christian when there is a church in view. At least we still get more play then the atheists...
That said, I think
David here makes a better argument then I ever will about why DC should stop this nonsense.
#21
Posted: Tue Sep 27, 2011 4:42 pm
by Hotfoot
Slut shaming is basically saying "it's okay for a man to sleep around, but not a woman", making it a shameful thing for a woman to decide what to do or not to do with her body. It's not about infidelity, rather, it's about promiscuity.
The problem is, however, that a lot of writers are crap and have trouble writing characters outside of their normal bounds. A "liberated" or "strong" woman is a strange and terrible concept for many comic book writers, and so they fumble about and do shit like this. "Comfortable with their sexuality and enjoying of sex" becomes "poses like a centerfold and has sex as often as possible, with as many people as possible."
And yes, Mister Terrific and Power Girl are on the low end of the shit in the DCnU, but it's still somewhat annoying in as far as it seems like DC is just running around screaming "Look! We don't have the Comics Code anymore! SEX! TITS! BLOOD!"
It's like DC missed the whole Heavy Metal thing and now wants to get in on it. Seriously, it's like a bunch of kids who just got to college and figured out that they can stay up all night, drink, smoke pot, and party all the time without their parents telling them to chill out.
#22
Posted: Tue Sep 27, 2011 5:16 pm
by LadyTevar
I think
this Shortpacked comic by David Willis says it all about Starfire's "reboot", and about what it's gonna do to DC's bottom line.
#23
Posted: Tue Sep 27, 2011 7:06 pm
by frigidmagi
That's actually what I linked to Tev...