DC to relaunch with 52 #1's

[briantm]

http://forbiddenplanet.co.uk/blog/2011/dc-announce-52-new-series-in-a-universe-wide-reboot-and-major-news-on-digital-comics/

Madness.

[Dandontdare]

Insane idea. It's a slight improvement on those interminable Crisis crossovers that they periodically use to tidy up continuity, but 52 issue #1s at the same time? Crazy.

I can see WHY they're doing it, as DC continuity is a right old mess (how many decades can someone legitimately be a "Boy Wonder?), but this risks throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I don't do the digital thang, but I'm guessing that's more welcome news.

[Buddy]

That seems a bit mad really... all at the same time!

If it needs doing would it not be better to spread it over a year doing 4 or so a month.

[briantm]

I think that if marvel or DC got their core titles down to 15 or so, and reigned in their crossovers and tie ins, they would get more people who would collect them all.

[TordelBack]

Bloody good idea, if you ask me (and no-one did).  Chuck in the towel on the printed paper route (except for die-hard collectors) and just go for casual digital purchases.  When the reboot doesn't take, switch straight back through the universe-shatteing magic of magic of Darkseid buggering Superboy or something, and offer your whole original back catalogue at a reasonable digital price.  Desperate times and all that.

[Colin YNWA]

I'm a massive DC fan and while I understand why there's a lot of nashin' of teeth about this, I personally couldn't really care as long as the stories they come out with are good. There's a lot of very good creative teams on a lot of very good titles at the moment and as long as they are positioned well, on titles that they will do a good job on and DC continue to produce good comics with good stories, about the wealth of fantastic characters they have, I couldn't care if its issue 1 or 900. I've emptied my pull list spreadsheet from September and I'm really looking forward to seeing what gets put back in when details of the new titles and relaunch creative teams start to come out.

Anyway there's plenty of time for them to reset it all again before the big titles hit the big numbers. Indeed if they are changing we don't yet have it confirmed whether they'll be a new Action Comics 1?

As for timing 13 new titles a week is exactly the same number (a little less apparently) than they produce now so no issue. It'll dilute the impact of the weaker titles having relaunches but across the line will hopefully spark a lot of interest in the DCU amongst comics fans. The challenge they face doing it on one hit is they might get a massive single impact but how they will sustain that is open to debate. Hopefully the creative teams will be so good people will stick with the books. September's solicitations in a couple of weeks will make mighty interesting reading.

Hope Jonah Hex survives but I have my doubts.

As for the digital release thing it seems like an inevitability and all DC are doing is beating Marvel to the punch and therefore getting the headlines for it. Doing it when they hope to get massive coverage of a line wide change makes perfect sense with my limited understanding of these things.

[Jim_Campbell]

I can see WHY they're doing it, as DC continuity is a right old mess (how many decades can someone legitimately be a "Boy Wonder?), but this risks throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Continuity's a mess since the Big Two decided to try and maintain a market of the SAME dwindling pool of fanboys instead of turning over a larger pool of younger readers, and pandered to their anal insistence that the comics should operate in something approximating real-time.

Fuck that. In superhero time now=now; tomorrow=tomorrow; yesterday=yesterday; ten years ago=yesterday; forty years ago=the day before yesterday. If you have a problem with this, remember that you're reading a book about an alien who looks just like us but can fly and wears his pants outside his trousers.

The Simpsons have a Christmas special every year, and yet no-one's head seems to explode over the continuity implications of Bart STILL being ten years old.

That's not directed at you, by the way, DDD. It just drives me insane that all traces of fun in the comic industry seem to have been sacrificed on the altar of fanboy pandering.

Gaah!

Jim

[House of Usher]

Grrr. Desperation. Who even cares any more anyway?

[Greg M.]

I'm not a big DC reader, but since one of the end results of this set of relaunches is apparently Grant Morrison on a Superman title, that's enough to make me interested.

[Colin YNWA]

Fuck that. In superhero time now=now; tomorrow=tomorrow; yesterday=yesterday; ten years ago=yesterday; forty years ago=the day before yesterday. If you have a problem with this, remember that you're reading a book about an alien who looks just like us but can fly and wears his pants outside his trousers.

Bob Haney now there was a man that produced great comics by never once letting logic get in the way of telling a good story AND man could he tell a good story!

Grrr. Desperation. Who even cares any more anyway?

Adopt best meek Mark Hamill pose

"I care..."

[Professor Bear]

Take your common sense and fuck away off with it, Campbell - this isn't a job or anything where common sense has a place, this is the magic wonderland of fairytale rainbows and lemonade waterfalls that is comics.  After all, common sense might suggest that pandering to a shrinking fanbase of long-time diehard comics fans with a memory of more than five minutes is utterly at odds with "continuity should not get in the way of telling a story", but this is comics.  We hate the comics form and we want our comics more like films, but we also want them to stay the same while changing, too.
In regards to your comment about superheroes in real time - check out the Comic Book Resources boards whenever a thread comes up about the age of Franklin Richards.  It's either hilarious or deeply disturbing what follows.



But anyway, the problem with this DC reboot as I see it is twofold:
1 - this is just as much a jumping OFF point as it is a jumping ON point for readers, which is why no-one has done it before, certainly not a company whose main problem is not talent but in-fighting among staff and deliberate undermining of talent among management.
2 - DC have no shortage of writing talent but their books still come out mostly poor and no amount of gimmicks or name talent will change that because the management structure and creative process remains exactly the same after the reboot.  Those books are poor now and they'll be poor later because nothing will actually change.

I don't want to buy DC books, so it's nice of them to give me a tangible point where I can stop caring or following what happens in them.

[Strontium Claw]

DC have got balls of steel to do this.
However, I can't help feeling that the lunatics are running the asylum, Geoff Johns as Chief Creative Officer is surely an oxymoron?
He's running DC into the ground with his bizarre fan-fiction mix of gushing sentimentality, gory violence and continuity heavy stories.

The real problem in US comics is lack of variety, each month 95 of the 100 best selling titles are superhero comics, most people just aren't interested.
Going day and date digital is sensible but the pricing will be crucial: it must be less than a printed comic.
It won't change my buying habits, I will continue to buy everything Grant Morrison writes and wait and see if anything else catches my interest.

[Professor Bear]

The real problem in US comics is lack of variety, each month 95 of the 100 best selling titles are superhero comics, most people just aren't interested.

This isn't a dig at you, SC, but I've always found the notion that comics fandom is forced to buy superhero books at gunpoint an odd one.  That five percent of comics that isn't superhero books tells a different story than the one you think: unless your assertion is that those five comic books sell out quickly and everyone who missed out on the chance to buy them 'settles' for superhero books as a consolation, it's far more likely that comics readers want to buy superhero books and actually aren't interested in stuff like Ex Machina (one presumes because they had the misfortune to read it).

There's a snobbery about superhero books that's little more than "superhero fans are morons and boffins want to read comics about the Dreamtime/WW2/dystopian sci-wank"  that I can't abide.  A good story is still a good story regardless of genre - and superheroes are a genre just as much as gangsters, soldiers or cowboys are.

[Emperor]

Personally I think it could work very nicely. Simplify continuity and make line wide jumping on points at the same time comics are sneaking into places like Barnes and Noble again, plus they also announced going day and date on their digital versions. So they are making their comics more accessible at the best time in over a decade to actual pick up a comic without venturing into comic book shop and will be generating a tonne of publicity over this (it has already appeared in USA Today and Bleeding Cool had their best traffic ever yesterday with all the announcements). It could mean they do very well indeed from this (and perhaps even slightly break out of the LCS ghetto American comic books have been in for years).

Granted it does make a jumping off point for some but  I wonder how many fans who are up in arms will come sneaking back to see what all the fuss is about?

Also this news could really help the Big Three at DC:

Are we going to see Superman made an A-SS?

Included in the 52 series will be:

    * A new title starring Superman written by Grant Morrison.

www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=32566

This is a bit more vague but there has been talk of a GM WW project for a while (although usually one not in continuity):

Is There A Morrison/Jiminez Wonder Woman On The Way?

http://blog.newsarama.com/2011/05/31/never-mind-david-e-kelley-is-there-a-morrisonjiminez-wonder-woman-on-the-way/

Which combined with Geoff Johns and Jim Lee on Justice League could mean they have some of their biggest talent behind some of their top titles.

I'd also keep an eye out for what DnA and Paul Cornell get assigned to as well, plus there might be some more exclusives in the pipeline as they give their writing pool a bit more depth and breadth.

[Emperor]

The real problem in US comics is lack of variety, each month 95 of the 100 best selling titles are superhero comics, most people just aren't interested.

That isn't an example of a lack of variety - that just shows superhero comics just sell well, largely thanks to a historical accident.

You could spend all your spare cash on American comic books and never have to pick up anything that has even the faintest whiff of spandex. Just look at the waves of creator-owned titles from Image that seem to sell out their initial print runs as they are packed with a wide-range of stories, just look at Dark Horse (or just Mike Mignola's output there).

Personally the sad thing is that the better quality superhero comics tend to be on the periphery of their fictional universe or even out of continuity, so are seen not to "count" and disappear quite quickly because of low sales.