Opinion: Counterpoint – The DC Reboot Is a Great Idea
I’ve been hearing rumors for a few weeks now that the Flashpoint event would “reboot” the entire DC universe. Honestly, I didn’t think they would really do it. But now it seems like they are, and though my Twitter feed does not seem to agree, I found myself really excited when I read the news. DC has been going in the wrong direction creatively for a while now. Comics sales are well down since the recession started, and publishers have been much too slow to get on board with digital comics and it’s hurting them just like it hurt the music industry. I’m not saying DC will pull this off, but if they do, it could help fix many of these issues.
DC basically has the Batman titles, Green Lantern (maybe) and a few lesser-selling, fun books like Batgirl and Power Girl going in the right direction right now. That’s it. No one’s reading or cares about Justice League of America, or Superman, or Wonder Woman. Compare this to Marvel, where the Avengers titles are the books everyone is reading and talking about.
Complain all you want about the events, but the Marvel universe is much more cohesive and it has a sense of momentum that DC has totally lacked for a while now. Now I hear that the DC reboot will begin with a new Justice League #1 written by Geoff Johns and drawn by Jim Lee. I’m going to assume that this will be a Batman/Superman/Wonder Woman Justice League, because otherwise why bother? If we got a good “A-team” Justice League book out of this that makes people excited, then the entire thing will be worth it from my perspective. Comic Book Resources is also reporting some unconfirmed rumors of other titles, including a James Robinson Hawkman, a Geoff Johns Aquaman, and a Grant Morrison Superman. All three of those would be instant pull-list additions for me. I’m also really hoping for a real Wonder Woman title not written by J. Michael Straczynski.
The issue of renumbering everything at #1 is a little trickier because it’s obviously only aimed at boosting sales. Well, guess what, sales need to be boosted. Local comic shops, where we build this community, are having a lot of trouble. Books that were selling 80,000 a couple years ago are now selling 40,000. It’s bad, boys and girls. We’re not going to get back to the Nineties with X-Men #1 selling a million copies. It ain’t happening. But you know what, I think there are some people who would read a good Superman ongoing that doesn’t get bogged down in whatever the hell Straczynski has been doing on that title. Action Comics has been fun lately, but honestly that’s been about Lex Luthor running around trying to get back the Orange Power Ring he lost after Blackest Night. Try explaining that to a non-fan. If they can keep the good bits from continuity and get rid of the weird bits, I’d be okay with this as a non-fan. I want to like Wonder Woman but at this point I have no clue what she’s been doing the past ten years outside of killing Maxwell Lord and getting mind controlled by Darkseid for a while, so it’s hard to jump on. And it doesn’t seem like they’re jettisoning the big stuff. I mean, it looks like Geoff Johns is in charge here. Do you really think they’re going to forget about Blackest Night all of a sudden? It seems highly unlikely.
But the biggest reason I’m excited is a piece of news that seems to be getting buried under all the other business… Every single DC title will now be released in digitally on the same day it’s released in stores. I recently moved overseas, and essentially had to give up my weekly pull-list. Digital comics exist but the only publishers that really make them available in a timely fashion en masse are smaller ones like Top Cow. I love the comics community and want to continue to be part of it, and am willing to pay for digital comics to do so. But the big publishers just haven’t been letting me.
So I can’t wait for DC to go digital like this. This is the sort of move that could single-handedly turn me from a self-identified Marvel guy to a DC guy. If I can read Justice League on my laptop but I can’t read Avengers for six months, guess which one I’m reading? So, comics readers, I say we give this a chance. It’s a time for bold moves in comics, and I hope this one works out.
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GOGOLimp
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