DC Comics: Abort, Retry or Fail?
Everyone is all atwitter, on Twitter no less, about this whole DC Universe reboot that's happening in September. What probably shouldn't surprise me any longer - and yet I always find it baffling - is how capable folks are of developing extremely strong opinions in the absence of substantial information about a topic. We've all heard the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory and in this case it seems to be in as full effect as in any other: people are saying rude things about publishers, creators and one another with maybe even a little more abandon than usual. When you see a popular comics creator re-tweet some random person's criticism of the opposing publisher in a near-vacuum of actual data about the topic at hand it's... well, frankly it's just a bit silly.
Still, it's big news! Of course people are reacting! It could mean big changes in beloved titles! DC certainly says it will all mean tremendous change, with as many as 75% of DC titles having their creative teams modified. Change is scary anywhere, any time, and I think change is even scarier when it's to cherished icons of our youth. I've blathered at length about the inaccessibility of comics when I was a kid but comics derivatives - works featuring Lynda Carter, Adam West and Christopher Reeve - were a huge deal for me and I will gladly confess that when I read the headlines my heart sank in anticipation. I am a DC kid, plain and simple, and always will be because I always was. The experience of consuming DCU characters shaped me in ways I could never undo nor want undone and seeing someone else try to retool those properties feels like the unraveling of a part of myself. Reading that the characters are being updated is all too easy to read as Johns or Lee saying that the characters aren't good enough and what does that say about me, who learned so much from them and loves them so much? No wonder some people are so freaked out: this isn't just a change to these titles going forward; it can feel like an assault on their past, too.
Of course, all the signs were there already. DC has had the loin for reboots and retellings for decades but recent trends have pointed ever more clearly in this direction: the Earth One Superman and Batman efforts, the rebooting of Wonder Woman, Flashpoint, Return Of Bruce Wayne, Grant Morrison's run on Batman & Robin and even Brightest Day (far more so than Blackest Night) have all been outward signs of DC's case of the seven-decade itch. I don't think at this point that anyone can really be surprised that DC wants to reboot their entire universe when viewed in hindsight.
So what do I think? I think it's too early to form much of an opinion. DC says this will give the Justice League a new secret origin, but will it wipe out their entire history? They say they want the heroes to be younger, more modern and more diverse but that they don't want to start "at the beginning," so will their existing histories be axed or edited? Will this be a clean narrative break or more of an art upgrade? There are a lot of basic questions - what happens to existing titles, will the narratives be so different that there are effectively two functioning DCUs, will titles like Batwoman simply be swallowed up once and for all by this - and in the absence of answers to them I don't feel like I can justify feeling like this is good or bad from a narrative viewpoint. For that matter, I don't have enough information to form an opinion about the sales-chain changes, either. My kneejerk reaction to the same-day-digital news is to fret that this is going to be bad for my local comics shop, too, but for all I know it will drive people to the local shop by getting them interested in the first place.
I'm even managing to fight down my usual fear that little information indicates the unavailability of good information. When D&D 4E was being hyped sans meaningful data I said to my partner, "[Wizards] never say anything in their press releases and what that tells me is that either they're all lousy at marketing or they've changed so much about the game they're afraid to say anything." In this situation, though, I don't necessarily come away with that impression. It seems pretty obvious that DC just want to be tight-lipped because it gets them attention.
So yes, I am withholding judgement as best I can. What I do know is the rubric I will use to measure it once the books are out and it can all be judged on its own merit:
- Does it generate interesting stories? I thought DC had gone off the deep end and kept running when they "killed" Batman and instead that generated the best DC comics I've read in years. The proof for this reboot will be in the pudding and nowhere else.
- Is it good for comics shops? Good comics stores are treasures. In my town there are three stores: one fantastic, one okay and one revolting. The worst of the three can't possibly be harmed more by a publisher than by its own complete failure. If this hurts either of the good ones, though, DC will have committed a crime against my community.
- Does it bring in new readers without driving away old ones? Yes, DC needs to increase readership. The reality of corporate culture is that a business that isn't growing should be shut down no matter how profitable it is or how treasured its output might be by its consumers. If they piss off all their most loyal customers, though, doesn't that kind of just have New Coke written all over it?
- Does increased diversity feel like tokenism? I don't want a superhero team that mentions the existence of Batwoman but never shows her because the Normals can't handle reading her. (There are already conspiracy theories that the Batwoman delays are DC using this as an excuse to kill that project entirely.) If DC want to attract "mainstream" readers, are they terribly likely to show minorities on the page or are they just going to whitewash and heteronormalize everything and everyone? I'm sure our colleagues next door will tell you that Halo was a great game but I will always associate it - and Madden - with the fratboyification of Gamestop. Rubber Justice mentioned this on Twitter and is absolutely 100% right.
Until we have more information - and the books themselves - all these are questions no one can answer. I get why people are upset and I find it fascinating that I have read literally no one who is not employed by DC saying that they are excited by this change but I think anything besides an attitude of wait-and-see is premature. In the meantime, the Internet can take care of itself.
Klarion
Posted to Superheroes, Tomorrow's Musings on 1 June 2011
· Comments (9)
Other stuff like this: Batwoman, DC Universe, Justice League, Reboots
You're being very prudent here, which is more than most of the comics internet can say. And that's a good thing; Wait-and-See is just how we need to do this, and I think the the Marvel creators who bandied about spiteful hashtags and thoughtless criticism are pretty much the epitome of why we should stay our opinions for the moment.
I'm not sure what to think of it.
Having started solely Marvel and then going very much into the DC, I'm not too attached to the DC universe as is.
That being said, I really love the whole current Green Lantern saga. Everything related to the War of Light. I hope we won't lose the various other corps in this reboot.
I find the whole thing about making them younger rather odd. Surely that's what the younger heroes are for. Just focus more on the Teen Titans and whatnot. Plenty of the younger generation are legacy heroes anyway.
I think there are countless good question that can and should be asked but I think presuming any answers to those questions is crazy talk.
Hands up, anyone who thought queens would be the ones calling for an end to catty banter? :)
Honestly, as long as it's good, I don't care. And I'm glad that, instead of what happened with Crisis on Infinite Earths, the whole line is being retooled at once. Look at the mess that became of Hawkman because of that. This way they can just say "This is Hawkman going forward and here's his origin" instead of trying to tie in a slew of origins together into a new one. Seriously, has anyone read his Wikipedia page!?
Let me give a little perspective here. I'm going to be 60 this year (and I'll wait until you recover from fainting...ok, good, you're back), I've read comics since I was *four*, and I'm a little like the protagonist of the "Legends" mini-series. I've seen DC's heroes survive everything from "irrelevance" (that would be right about when Marvel was just starting the Lee-Kirby era) to valiant attempts to clean everything up and make everything all nice and pretty again (every last single "DC-wide" crisis, invasion, attack, and war). I've seen solid attempts to bring a sense of real time passage to stories and characters (yes, after *mumblemumble* years there *should* be a new Flash, a new Green Lantern, hell a new *everyone*). I've seen a growing respect for history and continuity (hey, look, isn't that the JSA working with the JLA and the Titans?)
And the same thing happens every decade or so: Someone in the executive offices looks around and decides things are "a mess", so it's time for the universe to get a reboot. Some fans cheer at the news, others wail and gnash their teeth (which really is even less fun than it sounds, believe me). Yet all the fuss and nonsense over the reboot dies down eventually, and what's left are the important arguments - about characterization, about story, about art - that we've always had.
And the comics themselves get better and more sophisticated. And we love them, and we hate them, and they remain vital and alive to us.
And that *never* changes.
I'm both excited and dismayed.
For a long time (since I got back into comics about 7 years ago) I've been a proponent of Marvel or DC just saying "Screw this we really need to restart and examine what these heroes really mean."
Its hard to write for a long lived serial when so much of the backhistory, the shenanigans, and the bullshit of previous writers and editors gets in the way. It's difficult to move things forward in any meaningful fashion.
I'm still of a mixed opinion of this, because life has generally taught me to have low expectations, well thats not the best way to put it but I always brace myself for a negative change.
Right now I have a few questions that I think would sastisfy me of most of my fears, but I doubt DC will address those anytime soon.
Tabula Rasa, I just hope it helps improve the "art" of comic books and gives us some good stories.
Maybe even Rucka will come back to DC........
One further thought, this comes as a slight suprise to me, with the launch of so many new(ish) titles and the lowering of the price of single issues I wouldn't have expected it to hit right now, a year from now maybe, but not right now. If anything I think this decision is mainly a fiscal one and not a editorial/organizational one.
Guess I'll have to wait and see.
I'm going to be 60 this year
Security! SECURITY! (Just kiddin'. ;) )
I think you, gaymer_geek and Jordanzord all make excellent points. Reboots and reinventions are par for the course with superheroes, especially with DC heroes. I think there's also a strong fiscal component to it, especially when one considers that DC may be hedging its bets against losing the Superman case, which would cause them to lose ownership of enough of the character's signature features that they would essentially lose the character. I also think it would be wonderful if DC took this opportunity to jettison some of the patently stupid shit they have to do for some characters; the Hawkpersons are an excellent example and I sympathize with Jordanzord even as I admit that I think the Hawks are just, themselves, inherently insipid and I don't think a reboot will fix that.
Am I wary? Oh yes, so very wary. I think it isn't worth judging, though, until I've had a chance to see what they do with the characters I love.
I'm just wondering why DC feels the need to reboot their universe. Marvel has yet to do this, right? I mean, the closest I've known them to come is the Ultimate-verse. Yet DC seems to need to reboot and change everything every ten years or so. Or has Marvel done this and I just missed it somehow?
Since Marvel is still beating DC having never "rebooted". And DC has many more recognizable and iconic characters than Marvel does. Doesn't it stand to reason that rebooting isn't gonna solve the problem because the characters ages, costumes and origins aren't the issue?
The matter of why Marvel has outsold DC for years is more complicated than that, IMO. I think it has as much - if not significantly more - to do with the way Marvel has leveraged their properties into other media. They've made a million movies in the last decade. They've also had a number of successful cartoons and countless videogames. They've aggressively pursued an interdisciplinary, multimedia approach to their properties in a way DC largely hasn't since the '90s. Are a lot of those Marvel movies terrible? Yes, I think they are. They are out there, though, and they migrate from New Release shelves to bargain bins to Netflix Watch Instantly and along the way they catch a lot of eyeballs. The first Spider-Man was what, nine years ago? I read yesterday a blog post by a kid graduating from high school talking about realizing the role that film played in his childhood is roughly equivalent to the role Christopher Reeve's Superman played in that of someone who was a child then (such as I was). That made me realize that Marvel's dominance on the comic book shelf has to do with a lot of things including having gotten smarter about how to snare kids, and when, and where.