Through most of my comic-buying nerd life (dating from the time I was old enough to realize all the pictures in the book were telling a story until, um, now), I've been a DC person. Didn't dislike Marvel Comics, didn't think they were substandard or anything, just never really got into a lot of them.
So this decision by DC Comics to reboot their entire universe, starting every title over again at issue #1 and offering new origins, costumes and whatnot for all of their characters, matters more to me than any of the half-dozen reboots the Marvel Universe has done in the last 20 or so years. Or it would if I was still buying that many DC titles -- I'm pretty much down to the Legion of Super-Heroes main title and Adventure, since it's running Legion stories.
Sure, the DC continuity is all messed up because of all the different universes and heroes and everything they've used over the years. The original Flash, Jay Garrick, is still around as himself and appears to be around 50 instead of the 90+ he ought to be, thanks to some anti-aging treatments he's lucked into over the years, but Batman's been rebooted a couple of times and Bruce Wayne's currently in his late 30s or early 40s, even though they first appeared within a year of each other. The inclusion of heroes from the future only mucks things up even more.
We're talking comic books here, though -- there are of course über-nerds who will sniff down their noses at each and every miniscule mismatch between what earlier and later issues of a comic book say, or between the way a character appears in one book as opposed to another. But they represent a small portion of the comic-book buying public -- there's just not that many of them and they've not shown any special skill at reproducing. Most of us midlevel nerds like the characters, like the stories, like the artwork or a combo of any of the above. I enjoyed Jay Faerber's Dynamo 5 series, for example. Did I know if it kept precise continuity with the Captain Dynamo character that Faerber created for his series Noble Causes? Nope. Did I care? Nope again.
As blogger and proud nerd Jonathan V. Last notes, DC's press releases suggest they believe this move will bring enough excitement to their books that it will improve their sales figures -- they lag behind Marvel and have for some time. But as Last also notes in that entry and the one on his own blog, the one step DC won't -- or perhaps can't -- take in order to improve sales is to tell good stories with interesting characters and draw them well.
All the stunt-casting in the world won't save them if the resulting books aren't any good -- the return of Jim Shooter couldn't save Mark Waid's rebooted Legion of Super-Heroes after Waid and artist Barry Kitson left because the marriage of Shooter's adolescent snickering to Frances Manapul's ugly art produced nothing anyone wanted to read. Although Bill Willingham consistently creates some of the most interesting stories in comics in his Fables series, he never seemed to get a handle on DC's original super-team the Justice Society and left after two disappointing and pretty unfocused story arcs. It's doubtful stunt-storytelling like this universe-wide reboot idea will do much better.
The idea I mention in my post title is what exactly exasperated readers might think of doing with their boots or other assorted footwear they may be sporting should they encounter one of the geniuses at DC who came up with this idea -- kick them in their brains. But Last has a better closing line, quoting a friend's e-mail: DC has created the New Coke of comic books.
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