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| The new cast of 9021...I mean Justice League. |
Now on to geek business: DC Comics big cheeses Dan DiDio and Jim Lee announced that as of August 31st, they will be rebooting 52 titles with new number 1's and redesigned looks and a younger take on the characters while still telling tales "rooted in each character's legend" They're also throwing around buzz words like "contemporary" and "diverse", "modern", and "Real world themes and events". All of this will come at the end of this summer's Flashpoint event in which the Flash and Booster Gold find themselves in an altered reality and must find out why it happened and how to fix it. This is not the first time DC has tried this. The first time was with 1985's Crisis on Infinite Earths, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_on_Infinite_Earths in which the DC multiverse (consisting of separate Earths with there own versions of each hero, unique heroes, and their own continuity/history) was merged together into one universe. Afterward the histories of various characters were rebooted; the most successful were the "Big Three" (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman) while others (Hawkman, the Justice League, Power Girl, Legion of Super Heroes) became convoluted messes. The last 25 years has seen various other big events that were meant to fix continuity holes left over. None of which really worked. Many fans did not like the changes, and many became writers and artists. Including Geoff Johns, who is DC Entertainment Chief Creative Officer and has made a Grail Quest out of undoing post crisis DC.
Scott Tipton at Comics101( http://comics101.com/?page=C101 ) has some good questions about the while thing:
"What does making the books more "modern and diverse" mean? The comics were already set in the present, and things were already kind of futuristic; I mean, I don't know about you, but I don't have a jetpack or a teleporter. And diverse? So will some characters be arbitrarily re-conceived as different ethnicities? What does "real-world themes and events" mean? Fighting terrorism? A bad economy? Tornados? This just sounds like the kind of PR buzzwords people throw around in lieu of, you know, actual ideas. The characters will be younger, according to DiDio? How will that work? If Bruce Wayne is, say, 25, now, does that make Dick Grayson 15 again? So is Tim Drake a toddler and Damian Wayne a zygote? Is the entire "legacy" aspect of DC's universe now gone, meaning Wally West, Donna Troy and Roy Harper are back to being teen sidekicks, and Bart Allen, Cassie Sandsmark and Connor Kent are just wiped away? If not, why not? And why do the characters need to be younger to appeal to readers? IRON MAN was pretty popular at the box office, and Tony Stark wasn't 21 years old. Marvel seems to sell an awful lot of Wolverine comics these days, too, and he's no spring chicken. The stories will now be told for "today's audience"? As a longtime member of what was apparently, in the eyes of DC, "yesterday's audience," I can't help but resent that a little."
So really the whole thing comes across as a fan boy power trip. Not realizing that many fans today will have the same reactions that they had 25 years ago. Not to mention all the dangling story elements from various titles (many laid out by Johns himself in Brightest Day). Added on is the new maneuver where issues will be available for download the same day the are on sale in stores. Not sure how many retailers are on board for that. I'm also interested in what the creators who had to end story lines before they were ready and not fully explore ideas they had for the future. Especially Grant Morrison's plans in the Batman titles and James Robinson with Justice League.
DC has been #2 to Marvel sense 2002. This is around the time Marvel launched their "Ultimate" line: a separate universe from the main one where everything was started new in the 21st century. The main comic universe still remained. Both have been selling well in the last decade, and the Ultimate titles have done things and taken character/story turns the main Marvel universe couldn't. Fans could take it or leave it, same with "Heroes Reborn" which had a similar theme but was only on four of their titles (and also involved Jim Lee). DC has taken the all or nothing approach. Time will tell if it works; whither or not it does, it's a given that 25 years from now, another group of fans turned creators will change it again. And the circle will continue.....
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