The Status Quo
If you've read the blog prior, it's pretty obvious I have a Marvel bent. Realistically, between the Big Two, I read about five Marvel books for every DC one I pick up. This is not to say I don't enjoy DC books, I just never became as invested in the characters as much as I have with Marvel; I grew up reading Spider-Man and the X-Men moreso than Batman and the Justice League. Part of this comes from my perceived difference in the companies; in general, Marvel is a place that excels at fun stories, sacrificing greater depth for a more lighthearted overall feel to their shared universe, whereas DC's greatest strength lies in its characters, which a lot of times tends to lead to more dire and dour stories. Neither one is any better than the other, but in that regard my preferences have always landed me in the Marvel camp. This has left me more on the outside of DC's shared continuity looking in, rather than feeling like I can be a part of it. There have things I can pick out and enjoy, but I never felt like it was for me. For Green Lantern in particular, I love my Showcase collections and my old Tales of the Corps and have been Pepperidge Farming for a return to the simpler years of those space cops. Maybe it's not exactly what I wanted, but the idea of pruning down this existing continuity to lure in new readers and maybe people like me I gladly welcome.
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| Justice League #1 cover by Jim Lee |
This does raise the question of exactly what DC is doing with this new status quo, though. I've heard this referred to as a reboot, a relaunch and a renumbering, but with all that information that has dropped I'm still not entirely clear on how hard a reboot this is. I have no idea if they're scaling back to a previous point in the characters' histories, or just keeping some basic ideas and starting wholly fresh, or any clear idea at all really. The way it feels to me, is that it's like a bunch of kids were playing with their action figures, left leaving everything exactly where it was, and let another group of kids come in to play with the same toys but imagine their own adventures. It becomes hard to generalize when speaking of fifty-two different titles, with fifty-two (or more) different stories, but it feels less like a reboot than someone shaking up the snowglobe a little, although title to title, it's all over the map from the familiar to the brand-new. It's not, in the end, that extreme, and it's certainly not that groundbreaking a move to make. Especially not for DC, this isn't the first time they've kicked their continuity a little, pretty sure it's not even the fifth. Even Marvel's done this, albeit with their Ultimate line they left the other continuity running concurrently, for better or worse. The closest thing this feels like to me was also done by Marvel, on a substantially smaller scale. It's no secret how much I love Amazing Spider-Man right now, but it really wasn't too long ago that Spidey made a literal deal with the devil to annul not only his marriage but a fair amount of his continuity as well. At the time, the fan outcry was one of the most-maligned events in recent memory, and in this field that's saying something, but as we came out of it, Brand New Day used the freedom it was given to revitalize the series, and now on the far side of it we're getting some of the best stories in decades. DC faces the same Faustian deal, it's a gamble and almost assuredly it's going to be a messy start, but if DC doesn't squander the opportunity they're given with a fresh start, they can (potentially) come back stronger than ever.
The crux of these relaunches seems to be meant to make the stories accessible to new readers. An admirable goal the hardest part of that is saying they want this pool of new readers without simultaneously having it being interpreted as they're burning the old readers. This isn't (and doesn't feel) necessarily true, but everyone hates change, comic book fans doubly so. The idea that one demographic's money is somehow more important than another's can be construed as a little insulting, but it's also necessary to keeping the company running, and the fact that the reboot is relatively tame to what's been done in the past says they do still care somewhat. It hasn't stopped them from making some rather seemingly-stupid choices in the direction they're taking (or not taking) some of the books, however.
The Digital Age
The other arm of this is the digital distribution, and this is accurately pretty big. With the September relaunches, DC is going day-and-date digital with all fifty-two of their titles. As skeptical as I was initially (and still somewhat remain), I've found myself becoming more and more invested in the digital comic scene. It is still a rocky, nascent landscape, barely hospitable to man, and like ebooks I still hate (hate hate) that in many cases I'm buying licenses to read a comic on that particular reader instead of an actual file (especially versus the preference of getting an actual book in my hands). Eventually the technology will hopefully find it's footing, however, and even if it doesn't that doesn't mean it will go away. Sometimes, both the companies and the readers are forced to adapt quickly and not in the direction that we may wish to go so much as the direction we have to go. If coming into the digital age is comparable to Noah's ark and the flood, some of the smaller companies have already been ushered on-board, but the more lumbering, unwieldy creatures are struggling to get on behind them. Marvel and DC are the elephants, and with their initiative they're taking here, DC is the elephant who sucked it up and jumped on first, rather than be left behind with the aurochs and the unicorns. It may have landed a bit awkwardly and takes a few minutes to right itself, but it's on the boat. Not sure why this is an ark that requires it be leapt onto. The biggest thing hurting the transition to digital comics, at least for me, has been the price. The idea of paying for this license to read my comics on fairly-restrictive viewers is one thing, but paying the same price for an infinitely-renewable digital copy as a book made of ever-dwindling paper resources is absurd, at least in that no one's ever provided me with a decent economical reason for it to be so. DC's price-point of same-as-the-hard-copy for the first month, then dropping a dollar, is an admirable if not ideal compromise, at least it's a start, but more than anything this decision had to have been made as a show of good faith to the brick-and-mortar stores, which I appreciate. While it's not always pretty, with the clashing egos and general ugliness nerds can bring to the table, the idea of a comic shop is a bastion and can be as much a part of the comic culture as the comics themselves, and even in the face of a changing technological landscape, I never want to see them go, just the same as the floppies themselves. However, I'm not foaming at the mouth over all these new titles, and if some of these issues aren't worth dropping the extra dollar and longbox space to me that day, I'll gladly wait and get them on my various devices and phones. Buying things this way, and comparing the numbers from such sales, can give a clearer idea of what people are buying and when speaking with our dollars the messages will hopefully come out that much clearer.
The Books
But things like price and format don't matter if there aren't any books worth picking up. At this point, all fifty-two new titles and their creative teams for the relaunch have been revealed. Of the fifty-two, I have enough interest in a surprising thirty of them to actually aim to pick up their first issues, and around ten-to-fifteen of that with intention of continuing to read them after the launch, unless they're awful. Ten out of fifty-two doesn't seem like too much, I suppose, but right now I'm reading maybe five or six in the current DCU with any regularity, no Flashpoint whatsoever yet, so thirty in one month and even just ten ongoing is a huge jump in numbers for my pull. If nothing else, if the intention was to garner interest in DC for new or lapsed readers, it's certainly accomplished that.
The big guns are obviously still around. Geoff Johns' writing is a bit of a crap-shoot for me, but for now I have high hopes on his Justice League title. Worst-case scenario, it will still look pretty with Jim Lee on art. I will probably give some of the Leaguers solo books a chance, maybe after I've heard the reception on them or after the digital price-drop, because I would for once absolutely love to have a Wonder Woman or Aquaman book I can look forward to picking up, rather than just being told these characters are important to the greater DCU with seventy years of histories behind them but no actual enjoyable experiences of my own with them to back that up. Of the more B-list Leaguers, I'm not feeling any draw towards Krul's Green Arrow or Captain Atom, and a bit ambivalent on Tony Daniel's Savage Hawkman, but I will probably give Mister Terrific and Fury of Firestorm a chance, especially with Gail Simone as one of the writers on the latter. The DCU Presents comic will obviously change month to month, and so will my interest in the book, but I'll definitely grab the first issue. Always up for a good Deadman story.
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| Batman #1 cover by Greg Capullo |
With my general dislike for Green Lantern titles since Blackest Night and beyond, the Batman families of books have been my rock in the DCU for a while now. With Scott Snyder killing it on Detective Comics right now, I'll obviously follow him over to the main Batman title; we're losing Jock on art, but it will have Spawn and Haunt veteran Greg Capullo. I'm generally in favor of the rest of the Batman titles, with Finch's the Dark Knight and Winick's Catwoman (that cover...) being the only stand-outs as titles I have no intention of picking up. Otherwise, most everything looks good enough to give it a shot, even Red Hood And The Outlaws which I find I have a sick fascination with a book starring Jason Todd and Arsenal in the same vein as how I have Sharks In Venice currently in my DVD player. Batwoman finally coming out is exciting, although I'm a bit more trepidatious with Batgirl. As much as I do love what Simone can do with a character, the situation is a bit odd here. I have no real problem with Barbara taking up the mantle per se, however she ends up getting out of the wheelchair or having ever been in the wheelchair (again, the level of rebootery remains awfully mysterious), but between Cassandra Cain shoved under a rug most of the time and Stephanie Brown going from one of my favorite current-DCU books to apparently getting lost in the reboot-shuffle, or even the so-far-unspoken potential of a new Batgirl, it seems oddly regressive given how great a characters Babs was and still could be as Oracle. Though, if I'd want anyone on such a potentially explosive situation, Gail Simone is ideal leading this proverbial bomb squad. I can only hope DC doesn't squander the rest of the great characters they have at their disposal, and someone runs with my idea for Batgirl, Inc.
The Superman family I am not so unilaterally excited about. Superboy and Supergirl haven't provided much information other than some atrocious costumes and the promise of going through their Same Ol' origin stories one more time, which doesn't exactly scream of the fresh innovation this whole ordeal is supposed to be about. Superman himself, on the other hand, is another issue altogether. Sight-unseen, his titles seem pretty promising. A new, presumably All-American, Superman for a new age, written by Grant Morrison (Action Comics) and George Perez (Superman). To see the covers, however, paint an odd picture. Smallville-farmer's-best casual-wear, and oddly unSupermanly armor respectively, red eyes blazing, surrounded by destruction of origin unknown but feeling heavily like he's instigating it rather than playing savior. The best-case scenario is this is harkening back to the Silver Age covers where Superman was routinely the cause of the destruction, misery, mayhem or general superdickery that never quite came to pass within the issue itself. Certainly a cover being misleading or not accurately depicting the contents of an issue has never gone out of vogue, for some godforsaken reason. Either way, I'll give these two issues a chance but if past experience is any indicator I'm not sure I can stick with a Super-book for the long term.
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| Action Comics #1 cover by Rags Morales, Superman #1 cover by George Perez |
As much as I've fallen away lately, the Green Lantern books have always been some of my favorite titles DC puts out, so this new batch is a pretty safe bet that I'll at least give them a shot. With the Red Lantern solo book and the New Guardians title, it doesn't seem to have changed too much from the Old to the New. Perhaps with the movie coming out in the middle of the War of the Green Lanterns rather than closer to the reboot, they didn't want to jostle the new readers coming from the movie, or maybe with big daddy Johns being the Chief Creative Officer of the company he didn't want to trash everything he's worked to build the past several years. Maybe some combination of the two. Hopefully, though, this will be a chance for the characters to stop bouncing from war to war and Huge Cosmic Event to Huge Cosmic Event. Since One Year Later, GL's been suffering from serious Event Fatigue. Unlike Marvel Cosmic stories which, especially under Abnett and Lanning, tend to stay out in space as their own separate-enough continuum, DC Cosmic stories have a tendency to still be inexplicably tied to Earth. The Big Stuff is just overwhelming and usually not very good, and when they're dealing with human stuff constantly it loses anything that could make the book special and unique. The strength of a Green Lantern books comes the most from telling the cop stories in an exotic setting, Law & Order in space. There's really no indication of anything in the new solicits, but thankfully that means, for the moment, there's no season of some massive, title-spanning crossover event in their future either, so for as long as their in this quantum state I have enough hope that maybe something good will come from the reboot here. And my guilty pleasure will be, of course, the Red Lantern book. I know, the concept is silly, I have no delusion there. But, since they're not being played as villains, seeing that they'll be "battling against injustice in the most bloody ways imaginable!", I just can't wait to read it. It'll be like DC's Venom.
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| Red Lanterns #1 cover by Ed Benes |
Rounding out the traditional superhero fare are the "teen" and "sidekick" books. I'll join the massive throng of voices excited to see Jaime Reyes' Blue Beetle getting his own title again. I've always enjoyed the character, especially after marathoning a couple seasons of the Brave and the Bold (which I'm sure had a lot to do with making the character well-known enough to get his own slot in the relaunch titles, more than the fan outcry for the character). In a similar vein, it's good to see Static Shock thrown back in the line-up, and I look forward to that one. I've never been a huge Legion of Super Heroes fan, so I'll probably pass by their two books in the line-up without a second thought, but if I hear they're worth checking out I'm willing to give them a shot down the line. Hawk and Dove is drawn by Rob Liefeld. I've been off and on the Teen Titans forever, so I'm tempted to give this one a shot but I think I'm going to have to wait on the reviews. The team line-up doesn't grab me enough to jump on the title, and the designs on that cover are atrocious, atavistic throwbacks to the worst times of comics. I usually try and find the good in these things, but... seriously, a bar-code tattoo? The 90s-chitinous-armor Bugg*? Just... everything on that Wonder Girl? I said it at the time, and it still rings true, there's a lot of little things I don't like about the relaunches, but this cover is the only thing I straight-up hate.
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| Teen Titans #1 cover by Brett Booth |
The magic books, apparently now ushered under a tent called "The Dark", tend to be some of DC's strongest, a place where the superheroic antics of the DCU meet what seeps in from the oft-darker, much-beloved Vertigo books. Peter Milligan, writing both Hellblazer and Red Lanterns, may find a happy middle ground writing Justice League Dark, a silly title but a potentially brilliant idea of a semi-black-ops, magic-based Justice League called in to mop up the more arcane problems the regular League can't deal with, also featuring Hellblazer's John Constantine('s DC incarnation). Jeff Lemire is handling two books in this category, the return of Animal Man and a (Seven Soldier's) Frankenstein book, who's currently in the Flashpoint universe in the one FP book (also by Lemire) I'm tempted to go back and grab as I've heard it described on one of the iFanboy podcasts as "DC's Hellboy", which is undeniably tempting. And the relaunch title looks to be more of the same kind of thing, so that definitely has a pin in it. Swamp Thing's been back in the DCU for a little while now, but I hadn't really cared until I saw Snyder was attached to the new book. That alone probably would have gotten me picking it up, but seeing on Twitter how excited he was to be writing the character only makes the book sound that much stronger. The Paul Cornell Etrigan book is also a must-grab, everything else I don't really know enough about to start salivating over so I'll wait and see how they play out.
Finally, we have the mythical "The Edge". Aside from being U2's guitarist, it's also where a lot of the now-defunct Wildstorm titles are being folded into DC proper, along with a few other titles that apparently didn't fit elsewhere. A couple stand-outs in here, such as a new OMAC who looks to be far more based on the Kirby classic (Kirby Klassic?) than the modern iteration from Infinite Crisis, and Stormwatch's relaunch into the DCU. Suicide Squad remains a maybe, it seems to be the spiritual successor to Secret Six, or at least DC wants it to be, and I love that smile on King (Hammerhead?) Shark's face, but that Harley Quinn is making me wary. The Edge (93.8 80 Minutes Of Commercial Free Classic Rock PYYOOWWW) is also home to the war comics, featuring Modern Warfare-inized takes on Blackhawks and Sgt. Rock, and All-Star Western, the new home of Jonah Hex, fortunately still written by Palmiotti and Gray, with the first issuing telling a story A) more grounded in the DCU than we usually see for Hex and B) one I actually really want to read, as Hex arrives in Gotham hunting down a serial killer alongside the old-timey GCPD and Amadeus Arkham himself. Potentially not as grounded as the Hex we usually see lately, but still sounding damn fun. And really, that's what I hope this is all about: getting rid of some of the institutional blocks and making these books fun again.
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| Suicide Squad #1 cover by Ryan Benjamin |
*Temporary name, I've heard. Doesn't make it any less silly to look at, though.
The Problems, Pains and Disappointments
Therein lies one of the major problems with the relaunch I've noticed so far: as excited as I may be, it might not be fun for everyone. The die-hards are not, at least in theory, happy with the shake-up. In fifty-two titles, there's not one that really screams all-ages. And while the face of it all actually feels quite a bit more ethnically diverse than it did before, it also feels less female-friendly than ever. There are obviously cries of, DC specifically albeit surely not purposefully, white-washing the line-ups in recent years, and issues of LGBT are sporadically brought up and maybe addressed, but from my standpoint of mostly watching the comics community looking in, the two loudest voices in recent years, at least from the chatter I've picked up, have been the market failing to provide decent all-ages content, and the institutional sexism that is fairly rampant through comics, while the market continues to pander to the adult-male readers. This reboot, if it wanted to, could have been a chance to be truly all-inclusive. Instead, there's really not a whole lot of change going on. Again, creative teams and titles have been shuffled but for all intents and purposes, we're looking at more of the same. Out of fifty-two announced titles, there are two females creators, two books written by Gail Simone and Amy Reeder doing art for Batwoman. For comparison, Geoff Johns alone is on three books. Nothing against Brian Azzarello but if they truly wanted to reach out to new readers, they could have reached out to, say, the preteen girl market and made Wonder Woman an all-ages title, instead of making the same book you have been making and continuing to market it to the people who already don't read it because It's Fucking Wonder Woman. Or even made a second, seperate Wonder Woman title on top of the existing one. I feel damn confident in saying that there are more people calling out for a Wonder Woman book their kids can enjoy than those who wanted to see a Voodoo book. As it is, it's not necessarily bad, it's just being marketed to the wrong audience. I am not currently what one would call a Wonder Woman fan, but there are thousands of potential people who could be, however I am the one this information is getting to. It's like trying to hard sell on some cheese specifically to lactose-intolerant people. Cheese is undeniably awesome, but those aren't the people who need to buy it. The same could be said for Supergirl and her new book, or Zatanna, Power Girl, Renee Montoya (as either the Question or a detective, both great potential) or Scandal Savage, none of whom apparently made the cut into this brave new world of DC's. Well... okay, maybe not so much Scandal for the all-ages umbrella. But she was an amazing character in the right hands, and apparently the higher-ups saw fit to more or less replace her and her team with Harley Quinn in about a third of a costume.
Another issue I'm seeing pretty readily is the fact that these are the titles coming out in September. September has four Wednesdays, which means that's fifty-two titles in four weeks. That's roughly 13 titles a week, and I know I won't be faced with buy each and every one of them, but in perspective that's still more than my entire pull some weeks. Even with the line firmly drawn at $2.99, people are going to have to make choices here. Someone, somewhere, is going to have to make a decision; Justice League versus I, Vampire, Batman versus Grifter, Green Lantern versus Red Lantern. This is basically shooting the lesser books and fringe titles in the foot. Maybe the new digital model will affect things, and they'll adjust their assessments of how well a book is doing the same way they're learning to adjust their sales, unlike the sluggish giant of TV ratings. So often in normal circumstances a good book gets lost because it's not getting the numbers it needs to versus a mediocre or shitty book with brand recognition. Any in this batch run an doubly-high risk of being overshadowed. Flooding the market isn't going to help anyone here, least of all themselves.
There were a few titles I was hoping or expecting to see who aren't mentioned in this first salvo. That doesn't necessarily mean they won't be coming on somewhere down the line, we already know Batman, Inc. is on hiatus until sometime in 2012. I had hoped to see Batman/Superman rolled over into World's Finest, and as mentioned above I'm surprised Zatanna and Power Girl are nowhere in the lists, although I knew it was too much to hope for I would have killed to see a return of Palmiotti, Gray and Conner to the latter. Additionally to Power Girl, unless I'm completely missing something the rest of the JSA are noticeably absent so far. As are the Marvel family, who like everyone else up here could have really benefited from a slimming of continuity and could have been great in a fresh, new book. And while I know Nick Spencer has plenty on his plate right now, a new Silver-Age-y ongoing Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen in the vein of the Adventure back-ups would have been a must-buy.
With the new and the uncertain, however, that only leaves more questions about the old. With this Great Relaunch Wall looming in sight, a lot of books probably have a lot of loose ends to tie up, or simply leave lying around. That was my largest initial complaint, while I'm sure this was not done on a whim within the company and time was allotted to the creators as best they could, the whole thing seemed to happen too fast, and it made the entire thing feel slapdash and sloppy. Unquestioningly, the greatest loss of the Old DCU that we know for sure that Secret Six is kaput, Gail Simone had a lovely write-up on the cancelling of the title here.
But, like anything, I can find a lot to gripe about, and I think others more invested than me in championing certain causes, be they ones of race, gender, orientation, have plenty of legitimate complaints of their own, but for the most part I'm generally in favor of this effort on their parts. Maybe they're doing the right thing for the wrong reason, or simply the right thing in the wrong way, but they have managed to get me more excited about DC comics than I have been in years and even if I'm not living in the best of all worlds, I'll be glad if I pick up even one more book I enjoy than I had before.
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