CBR: Details Emerge On DC's Relaunch

[Buried Alien]

No reason why he would be against it since one of the apparent outcomes is that it allows him, in one fell swoop, to move many of the DCU's longer lived characters closer to their Silver Age roots that we know he favors.

That doesn't make much sense considering that Post-Reboot, at least Superman, Flash, Wonder Woman, and Cyborg won't altogether resemble their classic, Silver Age selves.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

[kalorama]

That doesn't make much sense considering that Post-Reboot, at least Superman, Flash, Wonder Woman, and Cyborg won't altogether resemble their classic, Silver Age selves.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

I didn't say "altogether resemble " I said "move closer to." That's a pretty significant difference. And from what we've seen/heard so far, that appears to be the case for many of them.

[Buried Alien]

I didn't say "altogether resemble " I said "move closer to." That's a pretty significant difference. And from what we've seen/heard so far, that appears to be the case for many of them.

Seems like we're splitting hairs on words here, but in your terms, I think that if anything, they're moving farther away from from the Silver Age models.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

[kalorama]

Seems like we're splitting hairs on words here, but in your terms, I think that if anything, they're moving farther away from from the Silver Age models.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

A JLA consisting primarily of the Silver Age icons. A younger, unmarried Superman, a Batman without all the trappings of 3 generations of sidekicks and multiple imitators.

Sounds a lot closer to the Silver Age than where they are right now.

[The Lucky One]

You know, this unmarried Superman thing... I wonder. While I agree that that's likely what they're going to do, I think most of the non-comic reading world considers Superman married. Both the Superman show of the '90s (Lois and Clark) and the Superman shows of the '00s (Smallville) ended with Superman marrying Lois. Every newspaper and news show in America reported on it when they actually got married in the comics. Your average, random denizen of America probably couldn't name a single Superman story published in the last ten years, but s/he knows that Superman and Lois Lane are married.

So if the purpose of the relaunch is to draw in new readers and make the books more appealing to the mass market, as it always is... well, isn't changing one of the very few things that EVERYONE knows about Superman a bit contrary to that? (Not that it saved Spider-Man's marriage, mind you.)

-D

[kalorama]

You know, this unmarried Superman thing... I wonder. While I agree that that's likely what they're going to do, I think most of the non-comic reading world considers Superman married. Both the Superman show of the '90s (Lois and Clark) and the Superman shows of the '00s (Smallville) ended with Superman marrying Lois. Every newspaper and news show in America reported on it when they actually got married in the comics. Your average, random denizen of America probably couldn't name a single Superman story published in the last ten years, but s/he knows that Superman and Lois Lane are married.

So if the purpose of the relaunch is to draw in new readers and make the books more appealing to the mass market, as it always is... well, isn't changing one of the very few things that EVERYONE knows about Superman a bit contrary to that? (Not that it saved Spider-Man's marriage, mind you.)

-D

No,. Just because people know about it doesn't mean they care about it. And I doubt that many noncomics people really know about it on any conscious level. If you don't read comics, the last time you heard anything about a married Superman was the Lois and Clark show which was (A) almost 20 years ago and (B) wasn't exactly a ratings blockbuster. He wasn't married in Superman Returns (which, despite its qualitative merits was seen by lots of people) and he wasn't married for 99.999 percent of the 10 year Smallville run.

[briest57]

ly sells more E-books than print-books nowadays, last I heard.s'

Depends I've read a few articles that suggest Amazon have been a bit naughty and have included free public domain books in their figures and it's been suggested these make up the vast amounts.

It does seem to be true thought that Hardbacks of new books are being ousold.

[briest57]

I was just comming around to the idea of a total reboot and now the source is saying it isn't!!

I hate all these partial re-boots! I wish they would either have the guts to go the whole gog or leave alone.

[matthew_lane]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpUh_Yl49l4

[Benjamin Ong]

I wouldn't be surprised if these new 52 titles are DC's answer to Marvel's Ultimate Comics line. So these could be a temporary attempt to compete with Marvel for a bigger market share. Think Age of Apocalypse. Or Heroes Reborn. Where regular and ongoing titles were "cancelled" for four months to a year before everything reverted back to the normal universe/timeline.

Or it could be set in a post-Flashpoint world. Another Earth. Didn't DC introduce a new Multiverse at the end of the 52 weekly limited series comprising of 52 different Earths? Isn't Grant Morrison working on Multiversity?

By the way, comics priced at $2.99, $3.99 and $4.99 cost RM12.60, RM16.70 and RM21.00 respectively over in this part of the world. Still wanna spend that kinda money and read something that takes less than 10 minutes to finish? I think most people have voted with their hard-earned moolah. (Yeah, we accepted Joe Quesada's challenge)

As for trades, sure, they're cheaper to get compared to singles. And we have the option of ordering from The Book Depository, Amazon, acmamall etc. However, from my own experience, even if I'd skipped the monthlies, rarely do I go back and get the trades/hardcovers later on.

These days, I only get omnibus and absolute editions. Thor by Walt Simonson Omnibus is a keeper. I am a proud owner of Absolute Watchmen, Absolute Crisis on Infinite Earths, Absolute New Frontier. And I love my Captain America Omnibus and Death of Captain America Omnibus. Madman Gargantua is a nice package. I just ordered Madman Atomica from TBD. Can't wait for it to arrive.

However, there're still some titles that I follow in their monthly format. Grant Morrison's Batman is an only current example. Minis don't count, right? I'm getting Allan Heinberg and Jim Cheung's Avengers: The Children's Crusade and The Chief's Ultimate Avengers vs New Ultimates. Flashpoint and Fear Itself too. I pick and choose when it comes to Geoff Johns' Green Lantern.

So am I excited about DC's new 52 no. 1s? I'll check out Justice League by Johns and Jim Lee. Green Lantern too. And the rumored Superman series by Morrison. I wonder what's gonna happen to Batman Inc.

In conclusion, I buy monthlies. I buy trades and hardcovers. I read free online comics/webcomics too.

Is it time to end the monthlies? Is it time to kill off the direct market? Is it time to stop being a comic book fan and go watch X-Men: First Class, Thor, Green Lantern, Captain America instead?

There are no hard-and-fast-rules for these. My own comic book experience might be similar to yours but it's also different. And it evolves over time too.

Perhaps the question should be: Is it a good time to be a comic book fan?

[Beast]

Saw this posted over at Linkara's "Atop The Fourth Wall" website. Take it with a grain of salt, but the info seems to fit.
If the info is factual, it makes sense why this seems to be coming out of nowhere. That it's Warner Brothers pushing this to happen.

Its actually worse than you think. I'm good friends with the owner of a major comic book chain (I'm not saying who cause I don't want to get him into trouble but trust me, no matter where you live, you have heard of his store) and he told me yesterday that a couple weeks ago Geoff Johns and Dan Didio called him to let him know about all this. They stressed that neither of them actually wanted this reboot done in this way. Didio has been wanting to do a reboot for a while, yes, but he wanted to build up to it better over the next couple of years. And neither he nor Johns wanted to do such things like making Barbara Gordon Batgirl again.

Almost everything coming out of this reboot? It comes directly from the corporate management of Warner Brothers. Yeah, so basically DC is now Marvel in the 90s. Morrison, Johns, Didio, all of them spent months arguing against this course of action. To no avail. They were told in no uncertain terms that not only was this going to happen but that if DC didn't start beating Marvel regularly in monthly sales over the next year, everyone, and I mean everyone, was going to be fired. The management at WB? They've finally woken up to the fact that they own DC and are through playing around. They are ready to shutter the whole damn comics arm of the company if it comes to that, though that is a last resort option. Its not like they need it after all. Its the characters and the merchandising that is valuable, not the comics they star in. They could easily just cancel everything and fall back on a few Earth One style graphic novels staring the big names every few months and be fine. They have over sixty years of stories to draw from after all.

The reason everything is so vague at the moment? Cause the people at DC know what kind of live grenade they have on their hands and they are trying every trick in the book to not set it off. They know this has the potential to set off a storm of geek rage that would make One More Day and everything surrounding it look like a mild, gentlemanly disagreement. Funny that we finally really do have a event that really is going to change everything, in the real world at least. Funny in the way that makes me not want to laugh at all that is. I know, I know, who am I, just some random guy on the internet typing all this away. But I swear to god to the trustfulness of all this, hard as it may be to believe. Creative is no longer in control at DC and god only knows how that is going to play out.

[avenging son]

any word on martian manhunters role in this new universe?

a jlu type john johnzz would be pretty cool in this new world order.

[pariah-1972]

The one thing that pisses me off is how this announcement is cutting the legs off Flashpoint and all the other books that are coming out before then.

i think it's extremely disrespectful to someone like Kubert who has been working on Flashpoint for a year and now they drop this bombshell knowing that a lot of fans are gonna drop Flashpoint and possibly all the other books before the reboot because those books won't "matter" anymore.


It seems like DC has this knack for shooting itself in the foot constantly.

[Lady Obie]

Saw this posted over at Linkara's "Atop The Fourth Wall" website. Take it with a grain of salt, but the info seems to fit.
If the info is factual, it makes sense why this seems to be coming out of nowhere. That it's Warner Brothers pushing this to happen.

Ewwww

There are just so many aspects of that are horrible I'd love to not believe it at all

But I guess I'll take it in a staring-at-train-wrecks kind of way

[ShadowDemon]

Saw this posted over at Linkara's "Atop The Fourth Wall" website. Take it with a grain of salt, but the info seems to fit.
If the info is factual, it makes sense why this seems to be coming out of nowhere. That it's Warner Brothers pushing this to happen.

You want to know the REALLY scary part? DC shuts down publishing, you can kiss the direct market goodbye. The LCS will be gone within 6 months if not sooner. Having your sales cut in half (more or less) because one of your two big suppliers just stopped production is a business killer...