DC’s Reboot And You

Now that we all made it through the HOLY SHIT phase of the news, we can break it down and look at how this will change the lives of DC Comics readers.

1)    52 titles will be rebooted in September. Roughly, all of them. All. Of. Them. All new  number one issues. Collectors, Start your Engines…

2)    Jim Lee and Geoff Johns took great pains to bring dead titles (Deadman, Aquaman, Hawkman) back to life, and redesign them to match modern design esthetics (Flash, Wonder Woman) so they will be new books.

3)    Day & Date digital releases. This got me going. I’ve wanted this since I got my grubby hands on an iPad. Why go down to the comic store when I can be ANYWHERE and read? Why take up room in the house you will fight with your loved ones over, when everything lives in the cloud? And for the collectors? Holy crap, windfall. These number ones could actually be worth something since so many of us are migrating to a digital frontier, much less the treasures we have in our long boxes?

4)    Retailers are going to be nervous. Very nervous. With the digital frontier calling loudly, the local comic book store is now panicked. They were facing this crisis down for the past couple of years, but now they have to face the same problem records stores faced at the turn of the century. What game stores will face soon.

So we’re looking at new continuity? I honestly don’t think so. Look at the new cover for Justice League International. That would not have happened unless the past 52 weeks of comics happened. All of these teaser comics we got today are related to Brightest Day. Except JLA…

Does DC need a company wide reboot?

Eh, hard to tell. It would be silly to dynamite all the new Green Lantern Mythology that has been introduced over the past decade. Batman is gathering a family, and Barry Allen is back (sort of). But, Superman is walking the Earth as if he was inspired by Samuel Jackson in Pulp Fiction. JLA, what should be the company’s flagship title, is a goddamn disaster. Most of DC Comics’ top title haven’t been winning more market share, or keeping fans. Superman is a great example.

Would they really reboot it all?

Well, they’ve painted themselves in a corner, and a time-travel induced wipe-out would be a tidy way to do it. In this case, they have to reboot it all, despite Zatanna pulling in good numbers for a magic book, and Batman coming back from the dead, and other comics doing really, really well. This isn’t a situation to compromise. They have before, like the end of Crisis, but it eventually caused a lot of problems. But, would DC really pull the trigger?Well, JMS gave a lovely sound bite about how Earth-1 Superman helped them off the ledge into this new chasm. Would they really wipe out a good thing for some other books. As Spock says: The needs of the many….

So What do I do in September?

Read comics. If you love them, read them? If you hate the idea of watching rerun comics, and having to pull another 12 issue of Hal Jordan’s “Secret Origin”, don’t pull them. The beauty of this market is that it is saturated with great stories and art. So now is the time to experiment with other things. Try an indie title, or a title from another publisher that always intrigued you. This is your moment to be brave.

Me? I’m going to watch the summer go by, and then decide on this. Digital has me all jazzed, but if I wind up pulling the beginning of the Flash one more time, I will be off to more creative pastures. I’m glad DC has the stones to try something this big, but I also have a feeling a lot of it is going to be an alternate Earth rug-pull. So, if I were you, sit back, and watch DC’s marketing department got to work this summer. It should be beautiful.