Last week it was revealed that all every DC Comics title would finish it's run in August ahead of a line-wide relaunch in September. As the announcements continue to roll out regarding the reboot of the DCU, I am becomming more and more alarmed by what I am reading. With each new reveal, I am becoming more of the opinion that DC are making a rather large mistake.Below I address some of my biggest fears, try to work out where they went wrong and suggest how I would have dealt with the reboot differently (it may require a time machine).
"We're allowing people who have never bought a comic book in their lives to download them on portable media devices and take a look,"
Now first of all, I have to stress that I think that this is a great move both for DC Comics as a business and for us as the consumers. Obviously, the move to digital comics being released on the same day, for the same price, as their printed counterparts was inevitable and DC must be commended for taking the plunge so early. The really smart move was to offer the digital+print combo pack for just a dollar more. This is what the hardcore fans want. I love reading comics on my iPhone, but they look SO much better in print.
My problem is that this could have been introduced at any time, with no need to change any continuity.
"for a more modern and diverse 21st century"
Below is a list of the 52 rebooted titles that have been announced for September.
Next to the titles, I am going to write a code. To show how 'diverse' the DCU has become, scan down the list and see how many of these titles feature straight, white men and women, or rather, don't feature one of the following minorities (extraterrestrials don't count for this):
EM=ethnic minority, HS=homosexual, D=disability, RM=Religious minority
1. Legion Lost EM
2. THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES
3. Aquaman RM?
4. Hawk and Dove
5. Captain Atom
6. The Flash
7. Hawkman RM
8. DETECTIVE COMICS
9. BATMAN
10. BATMAN AND ROBIN EM
11. Nightwing
12. Batgirl
13. Batwoman HS
14. BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT
15. Catwoman
16. Batwing EM
17. GREEN LANTERN
18. GREEN LANTERN CORPS EM
19. Green Lantern: New Guardians EM
20. JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA EM
21. JUSTICE LEAGUE International EM
22. Red Hood and the Outlaws
23. TEEN TITANS
24. BIRDS OF PREY
25. Mr Terrific EM
26. DC Presents
27. GREEN ARROW
28. Vampire
29. Resurrection Man
30. Animal Man
31. Demon Knights
32. Static Shock EM
33. Frankenstein, Agent of Shade34. Voodoo EM RM
35. Firestorm EM
36. Justice League Dark
37. Red Lantern Corps
38. Swamp Thing
39. Wonder Woman
40. Stormwatch
41. Blackhawks
42. Sgt. Rock and the Men of War
43. All-Star Western
44. Deathstroke
45. Grifter
46. OMAC
47. Blue Beetle EM
48. Suicide Squad
49. Action Comics
50. Superman
51. Supergirl
52. Superboy
It isn't that diverse really. Especially when I'm counting Kyle Rayner and Damian Wayne, who are often drawn/coloured white (Kyle is half-Irish, half-hispanic, Damian is half-American, half-whatever Talia Al Ghul's heretage is).
Ethnic minorities: Where are Cassandra Cain, Renee Montoya, Jefferson Pierce and John Henry Irons? Where are the Great Ten or the Global Guardians?Non-straight sexual preferences: Where are Scandal Savage and, again, Renee Montoya?
Characters with a disability: Where is Barbara Gordon? Where are the Doom Patrol?
I ask you to have a look at the creative team who crafted the comics that you read each month. Are they all straight, white men? If they aren't, then how many of them were?
As a straight, white man, I can tell you that we aren't all that great and we don't understand everyone from every viewpoint. Diversity in creative staff is just as important as diversity in your books. For every Gail Simone and Francis Manapul who have a book, there seems to be a Marcus To, Dustin Nguyen or Nicola Scott waiting on the wings.
The thing that worries me the most though is the apparent 'miracle cure' of Barbara Gordon. If this was a roll back to an earlier DCU, then fine I could accept that, but it isn't. I think that there are some large groups of people who need to know just what happened to their hero, this strong woman who refused to let a disability stop her from fighting. The explaination better be fantastic.
Continuity
It appears that parts of the recent Batman storylines and most of the Green Lantern storylines will remain intact. Other stories however, have been completely wiped out. Either do it for everyone or leave it alone. This is why Infinite Crisis and Final Crisis had no effect. They made the most minor of changes, which of course began to lead to big problems. If you have an opportunity to start everyone from a common ground, then you should use it. I'm not saying that everyone should be rest to how they were in 1980 (for example), but if I change the history of Wonder Woman completely and leave the Batman titles relatively unchanged, then I develop some serious problems pretty quickly. If everyone is changed to a similar degree, then we can explain the changes by quite simply saying 'that happened differently in this reality'. When we know that we can refer to Blackest Night for Green lanterns, but not The Flash though, it becomes very confusing for ardent DC fans, let alone new readers. Looking at the Batbooks, we have a deaged Bruce Wayne, who has apparently trained four Robins and has a ten year old son. This means that he has to have been Batman for at least eleven years (need at least a year before Ra's Al Ghul would take notice of him). The only way I can see this working is if he was 18 when he first donned the cape and cowl (putting him only seven or eight years older than Dick). If Batman has been around for eleven years, what does this mean for Superman or Wonder Woman? Have they been around that long or are the just starting out? Are we going to have three former Robins all with more experience than The Flash?Where did it start going wrong?
Quiver. In hindsight, it began with Oliver Queen's resurrection in 2000/1. Though I didn't buy the reason that he came back to life, the first three years or so of Green Arrow were good, but without a plan in place for his supporting cast, it quickly went off the rails. I started to get the feeling that he had been brought back with no real reason other than; Oliver Queen is the Green Arrow that we know.
I knew it was really going south however in April 2005. I was sat in a New York City hotel room and had just turned the final page of Batman #638 to reveal that the Red Hood was in fact, Jason Todd returned from the grave. The only thing that has shaped Bruce Wayne more than his failure to protect Jason Todd was his parents' murder. The death of Jason Todd had set the tone for all of Tim Drake's early adventures as Robin.The years since have seen the resurrection of many characters. Some have been recieved well, some haven't. The problem though is how their resurrection affects what has been built in the time in between their death and new life. In the case of The Flash, Barry Allen's return has effectively relegated Wally West from the Premier League of superheroes to the lower leagues. His fans will constantly be looking for 'his time' to shine; will this year be his year?
The only return from the grave that has sat well with me has been Hal Jordan. This is because of the plan for how to use the character and how to integrate him back into the universe. The four Earth Green Lantern's were all given clear roles within the new line-up. The Green Lantern line has continued to be strong since.
The constant micro-management style of changes that we've been dealt (Infinite Crisis, 52, Countdown, Final Crisis, Brighest Day and now Flashpoint) has caused as many problems as it's solved. Surely it you want to bring back the Silver Age characters, a line-wide reboot would have been the way to do it?
To me this new DCU reboot seems like more of the same micro-management. If you're going to change it, then change it. If you want it to be instantly accessible, then do it. Crossovers must stop. Having to buy several books to understand a story shouldn't happen. I feel really sorry for new readers who are being advised to read Grant Morrison's Batman & Robin. They're in for a real shock when Bruce just strolls back into the mansion like nothing happened. It's not exciting or a mystery to be solved for most new readers, it is unwelcoming and off-putting. If a character's current state can't be described in a short blurb, then they have become too complicated.
Earlier this year I put some DC books in the classroom for the children to read (age 5-7). These books included a character profile page which summed up everyone in the book in two sentences. These weren't overly simple, they were bang on.
If children of five can grasp who these characters are in a couple of sentences, then I'm sure that new comic readers from 13-90 would be able to read a simple recap page.Dark Horse's Star Wars books do this really well. They give a quick summary of the story and explain when in the Star Wars timeline the book is set.
If DC adopted this, then we could have stories set at any time in our favourite characters' careers. This is something we've seen hints of (Legends of the..., ...Confidential, recently Teen Titans: Cold Case and Batman: Orphans), but for whatever reason has never really seemed fully supportred by fans or editorial. Perhaps DC Comics would find this useful in distinguishing Earths for multiverse tales.
Why did certain books never sell as well as they could have?
Advertising. It's really that simple. If you aren't advertising a book to the audience that you already have, then how on Earth do you expect new readers to jump on board?
Many DC fans know how great books like Birds of Prey or Red Robin have been for the past year or so. The crime is that not every DC Comic fan knew that they were so good. Give us real teases, not pencil previews in the back of comics, not crossovers that make us sample a title. Talk it up. Build some hype. Take out a page ad space in your own magazines. USE YOUR ANIMATION STUDIO!! WB are pumping out three DTV animated features each year. Why haven't we seen a focus for Tim Drake? Kyle Rayner? Jamie Reyes? Heck, even Jonah Hex got a short, but that was only because the movie was coming out. Take a harder tack with the execs (who axed Batgirl: Year One and Teen Titans: Judas Contract) and make them see how these will work in conjunction with the comics to sell each other. The same goes for motion comics. Batgirl: Year One has been availiable on iTunes for nearly two years. I have an iPhone with the DC Comics app, I browse the DC message boards and visit the main site at least once a week, I check The Source daily, Facebook, twitter, Newsarama, you name it. I've watched all the animated features and shorts. How the hell did it take me TWO YEARS to find out about this?
Yes, they are in business to make money, and movie tie-ins sell, but DC Entertainment need to stop trying to use movies to sell these and start thinking about how the animated features, series and motion comics can be used to sell print and digital comics. The more people that buy comics regularly, the more people will be likely to buy the animated features.
How about a series of 5-10 minute shorts to play in front of new Young Justice episodes? A new short for each episode. Each short would showcase a different character in the DCU. Viewers could vote for which they want to be the next feature. This would build some hype for the feature and for each of the books that had been made into a short.
How I would have relaunched the DCU
I'll try to keep this as succinct as possible because, I'll grant, relaunching an entire universe is not an easy task and lets face it, the challenge is supposed to be to create an accessible DCU. A DCU that new readers can delve straight into. If I can describe the entire universe in a couple of sentences, then I think the professionals should be able to have all questions answered by the end of September.
Basically, we'd be rolling the entire DCU back to roughly Year 8 or 9 of it's existence as well as scattering some of it's more mobile American heroes throughout the globe. Bear in mind that this is a starting point for something new, not to retread old ground.I'll start with Batman, since he is the true centre and flagship of DC Comics.
Roll back in time to Bruce is Batman, Dick is Nightwing, Jason is still dead, Tim is Robin and Barbara Gordon is Oracle. Nightwing protects Bludhaven and occasionally trips up to Gotham. Oracle travels the country with the Birds of Prey (Black Canary, Huntress and Zatanna).
For the most part, side-kicks and extended families would be cut. Superman and Supergirl protect Metropolis. Oliver Queen protects Star City as Green Arrow. Wally West is the Flash. Hal Jordan and Kyle Rayner are sector partners, taking turns to do tours of duty on Earth and supporting the Green Lantern Corps in space.Aquaman has the largest 'family', with Aqualad (Jackson Hyde), Tempest (Garth) and Aquagirl (Tula). This is quite simply because he is King of an Oceanic Empire and these are his apprentices, who he is training to act as his representatives. Kings are busy after all.
Jefferson Pierce's Black Lightning mentors Static Shock.
Jason Rusch would be the main host of the Firestorm matrix, which contains the concious imprints of it's previous hosts (including Ronnie Raymond and Prof. Stein).Jamie Reyes is the Blue Beetle, Ryan Choi is The Atom, Hawkman and Hawkgirl are reincarnated into Egyptian bodies, Wonder Woman lives in Greece, Hawk & Dove are trans-atlantic sisters on different sides of the English private/state education systems.
I'd take the Golden Age heroes out of continuity and put them back into Earth-2.
The Justice League would be co-ordinated by Martian Manhunter and contain representatives from around the world. So Superman (USA), Aquaman (Atlantis), Wonder Woman (Greece), Dr. Light (Japan), Kapitán Atoma (Russia), Cap'n Marvel (Austrailia), Bhūgōla (Indian version of Terra) as well as the Green Lanterns and Firestorm.
The Outsiders, an infiltration unit, would be run by Nightwing and contain Green Arrow, Black Lightning, Cyborg, The Flash and the Atom. They are the CIA to the Birds of Prey's FBI.
Reflecting their age, the Teen Titans haven't assigned a leader, they ebb-and-flow in leadership roles. Robin, Supergirl, Blue Beetle, the Ravager, Static Shock, Empress, Hawk & Dove (part-time), Aqualad and Aquagirl (rotating).
Checkmate would be a corrupt government agency, seeking to influence the paths of dozens of countries. That title would follow agents as they begin to unearth the horrible truths about their organization.
The Coven would focus on Black Alice, Traci 13, Raven and other, original, characters who have their feet in pools of magical power.
As well as having books that focus on different genres (Magical, mysteries, superhero, spy thriller, sci-fi), placing the books more globally would give the books distinct and different flavours. Already we can see a diversity in cultures and ethnicity as well as personalities and attitudes. It would be unlikely that two characters given the same problem would handle it in exactly the same way.
Again, these would just be the starting points, familiar characters could be reintroduced as long as editors were careful adapt their background to the new world that they'd be introduced into.
Am I wrong about the prospects of the DCU? Would you have rebooted differently?
