DC: Reboot or Relaunch?

DC just announced that they will be renumbering or relaunching a number of series in September, including Action Comics, Detective Comics, Superman, Batman, Adventure Comics and Wonder Woman, with the last two having been recently relaunched and renumbered.  All in all 52 series are being set at #1, including several new series.  While this makes editorial sense in that it is coming on the heels of Flashpoint, and will certainly mean a boost in sales (as all #1’s do)  it erases the 1 thing that DC could hold over Marvel, that of their sense of history and tradition.  Adventure Comics is over 500, Wonder Woman is over 600, both Batman and Superman recently hit 700, Detective Comics is real close to 900 (875 or close to it) and Action Comics just passed 900. These are comic series that date back in some cases to the mid 30’s, and now they are being reset to #1.

Not just in the numbering, but DC is also messing up 20+ years of character development, Dick Grayson is back to being Nightwing, Barbra Gordon is Batgirl again, and not paralyzed, meaning no Oracle, and no Oracle means that Birds of Prey shouldn’t be able to exist (and yet it has a book).  Superman is no longer married to Lois, Tim Drake is Robin again, and Damien may not even exist.  This essentially erases everything that previous writers had built up, from Morrison’s Batman run (which has been going for at least 5 years) possibly erasing excellent runs like Simone’s Secret Six, Bryan Q. Miller’s run on Batgirl (which possibly means that Stephanie Brown never existed), Paul Dini’s Zatanna run (obscure but awesome). There are countless examples of characters being screwed up and having their developments halted, reversed, or even ignored, and we don’t know yet what all is going to be affected.

Now here is where I play devil’s advocate and tell you why it may be a good thing.  The Justice League, following Robinson’s rape of the team and series, it needed a refresher back to what it should be, a collection of the most powerful heroes on the planet, as opposed to a rule 63 version of the team (rule 63 refers to a female version of a male character or vice versa) not that I have a problem with female characters, but it just never seemed like the Justice League, read the Morrison JLA and then read the Robinson JLA, there is no comparison, one is way better than the other, and they are trying to replicate this now with the relaunch making the team the “big seven” again with the original 7 members of the team, Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, and Aquaman.  If they can’t make the original Justice League work with the original members, then they have more problems than resetting continuity.

There are new series launching like Hawkman, Firestorm, and JLI, and these look to be good series, and might be a lot of fun, however in order to get these series off the ground, they shuffled 75% of the creative teams on all the books which means even if a book is sticking around, the team that made it great isn’t.  For example, Gail Simone on Birds of Prey? Not anymore, she’s writing Firestorm now.  All-in-all, it might make for some interesting takes on a few characters, and it should prove to be an ideal jumping on point for any DC novices.  One thing to know, certain stories are remaining valid, an example of this is that Blackest Night still took place and the recent Green Lantern stories going back to Rebirth have all still taken place, and the Green Lantern title will continue the story.

All of the characters have received a new look designed by Jim Lee (for better or worse) it’s along the same lines as the Wonder Woman costume design from last year, which could be seen as a test run for the relaunch/reboot coming up. Speaking of which, DC claims that this is a massive relaunch, while others are claiming it as a reboot, and I think we should go over the difference.  A reboot is where you reset everything back to a starting point, whether it is a character’s origin, or some other key moment from their history, and everything that had happened since that point in continuity, no longer happened (example, John Byrne’s Man of Steel). A relaunch is where a character or series is revamped to be more appealing to the general fan base, and create an entry point for new readers in a way that doesn’t invalidate continuity (example, Green Lantern: Rebirth). Relaunches often come with a standard of comic book writing, the Retcon, which is likely going to play a huge role in the upcoming line-wide reset, affecting many of the character issues going forward.  With everything I’ve heard from DC, based on their solicits, this is really more of a relaunch than a reboot.

This is all fine and dandy from a publishing side, but does it make sense story wise? Not that it would seem to matter, but yes, it seems that the events of Flashpoint will in some way cause this relaunch to happen, partially due to Flashpoint dealing with an altered timeline, failure to set it right again would be the perfect catalyst for the massive relaunching going on.  Now the question some have asked is, is this going to be permanent? While I have no idea if this is just a follow-up event to Flashpoint, or if this is the new status quo, the biggest issue is the numbering, how long until they renumber Action, Detective, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and Adventure? And when they do, it just makes DC no better than Marvel, who seems to renumber or relaunch series every month just ask Matt sometime how many Punisher #1’s there are.  But in the end, what really matters is if the stories are good, and if doing this wipes the slate clean for some good writers to tell good stories without tripping over continuity? Then this would have all been worth it.

I know I promised I would be covering Zatanna this week, but I felt I had to address the relaunch issue before getting back to more fun things.

-Pete