DC Reboots Universe 292
An anonymous reader writes "Bob Wayne, Senior Vice President of Sales at DC Comics, has written to comic book retailers saying: 'Many of you have heard rumors that DC Comics has been working on a big publishing initiative for later this year. This is indeed an historic time for us as, come this September, we are relaunching the entire DC Universe line of comic books with all new first issues. 52 of them to be exact.' In addition, some characters are going to be younger, some may be missing, relationships are being changed, and Grant Morrison will pen a new Superman title."
Ran out of ideas? (Score:5, Interesting)
Just a strategy (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Old fans (Score:4, Interesting)
I actually really enjoyed the Star Trek reboot. I know it flew in the face of years of back story, but it was as entertaining (if a bit campy) story as I've seen in the Star Trek universe. I think I'm learning to live with all my childhood shows, stories and heroes for that matter being brought back in different light as long as what comes of it is entertaining to me and my family. I guess it's better than it being faded out entirely. I still don't forgive Lucas for not seizing the opportunity to really update Star Wars with a really exciting prequel. To me that wasn't entertaining and painful to watch. Star Trek on the other hand proved to exceed my expectations, even though I knew it flew in the face of Gene Roddenberry's vision.
Ugh (Score:2, Interesting)
Despite being a geek, I've never really followed comic books. Mainly it's been because of cheesedick writing. It's the worst of television (too many hands) mixed with the worst of desperate fan-service for dollars.
Marvel spawned a whole new universe for new readers, Ultimate something or other. That's running in parallel with their existing titles. I have no idea how successful that was.
The problem of a long-running strip is that the characters are stuck in a time warp even while the world moves on around them. Archie is always going to be in a 1950's America that never really existed even as computers and cell phones are dropped in. (or at least that's how it looks at the checkout line. That Archie is even still published is in and of itself a time warp.)
The sad truth of the matter is most of the comic backstories suck to begin with. Too many writers, too much crap. There's not much worth salvaging. And seriously, how many worthwhile stories are there to tell with a given character? The only way to keep it fresh would be to keep getting new takes. Bring a writer on, have him tell his take, move on to the next guy. We see that happen with retellings of classic stories, why not with classic characters? But the problem is that the publishers aren't telling stories, they're moving product. The core consumer they're targeting wants the same old shit, boring and predictable, just like McDonalds. Roided out muscled dudes, pneumatic-titted heroines, and Frank Miller pseudo-grittiness. Bah.
The only comics I've seen that were any good were limited runs. (limited could mean numbers of years.) But they had a beginning, middle, and end. Something like Sandman was decent. But these lurching, undead, zombie titles that just keep going and going without doing anything new, just the same old boring, dependable shit... Ugh. I've watched too much Star Trek, I don't need to go find something new to be disappointed by.
Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots (Score:5, Interesting)
Like Alan Moore says, there's a difference between a "graphic novel" as in a novel that is presented in a graphical form and a monthly comic book. DC's mainline stuff (and Marvel's, for that matter) does not have an ending, does not really have a beginning, and generally doesn't really have any lasting development in the middle; any time anything actually happens it generally gets rolled back later. That isn't a "novel". I'm not sure what it is. But this sort of thing is why people don't take comics seriously.