DC To Relaunch 52 Titles in September

DC Comics have announced that following their summer crossover 'Flashpoint', they will be relaunching most, if not all, of their titles from issue #1 in September. A total of 52 books will launch in that month, with most creative teams being shuffled around or replaced, and it's rumoured that there will be an across the board resetting and simplifying of DC continuity, which has some longtime fans worried. No announcement has been made about whether DC's oldest established titles, Action Comics and Detective Comics, will be renumbered (both are among the world's oldest established titles, Detective dating back to 1937 and Action to 1938).

I initially misread that as "DC Thomson" and nearly crapped myself at the thought of new issues of Victor, Hotspur and Dixon Hawke on the shelves, oh well.

In my defence Scotland might be foreign one day XD

Scotland is pretty bloody foreign now.

Has it ever been anything else? Wish I got free prescriptions. But then, I have to pay for theirs...

tony ingram wrote:DC Comics have announced that following their summer crossover 'Flashpoint', they will be relaunching most, if not all, of their titles from issue #1 in September. A total of 52 books will launch in that month, with most creative teams being shuffled around or replaced, and it's rumoured that there will be an across the board resetting and simplifying of DC continuity, which has some longtime fans worried. No announcement has been made about whether DC's oldest established titles, Action Comics and Detective Comics, will be renumbered (both are among the world's oldest established titles, Detective dating back to 1937 and Action to 1938).

I'm sure the relaunch / renumbering will give them a short term sales spike (which seems to be the business that Marvel and DC are in these days) although at the possible expense of alienating some fans. In the long term I don't think it will arrest the decline of the industry.

Some interesting comments regarding the renumbering :

http://www.newsarama.com/comics/dc-retailers-number-ones-110601.html

I particularly agree with the comments about a new issue one being a "jumping off" issue as much as a "jumping on" one and the fact that the sales spike from a new issue one is always short lived and ends up needing another issue one shortly thereafter to repeat the same effect. (Dark Horse for example seem to have given up on ongoing series and are numbering everything as miniseries now.)

I suspect they'll do the same as Marvel did when they started over from issue # 1 back in the 90s. Switch back to the old numbering after a couple of years.

Personally I'm looking forward to the Retroactive line more than I am this reboot.

The only positive thing in this for me is the switch to having digital editions available on the same day as the physical ones. Whether the day and date digital editions will bring in a new readership or just drive down sales of the physical books even further I'm not sure.

I really don't think this is going to work, long term. It strikes me as a move born out of desperation to attract new readers, which will instead drive away a lot of the older readers who are effectively keeping the company afloat. It will only work if a) the number of new readers outweighs the number of longtime fans who give up on them (and I think a lot will) and b) the new readers then stay on board for the long haul, which is a big gamble.

The first solicitations are starting to appear :

http://www.newsarama.com/comics/dc-revamped-justice-league-titles-110602.html

By my reckoning this is the fourth "issue one" for Wonder Woman, and only a few years since the last one !

It's also the fourth Flash #1, and I'd guess about the sixth for Aquaman. Nice to see a new JLI title (particularly since Guy Gardner seems to be back where he belongs) and I'm thinking this may b e a less drastic reboot than at first seemed to be the case-but then, that probably means a peacemeal restting of the continuity of some characters and not others, and that didn't work out so well last time...

tony ingram wrote:It's also the fourth Flash #1, and I'd guess about the sixth for Aquaman. Nice to see a new JLI title (particularly since Guy Gardner seems to be back where he belongs) and I'm thinking this may b e a less drastic reboot than at first seemed to be the case-but then, that probably means a peacemeal restting of the continuity of some characters and not others, and that didn't work out so well last time...

The rumours I heard were Barbara Gordon back as Batgirl and Lois and Clark no longer married...

I think the former is just a rumour at this stage (there's supposedly a new Birds of Prey series, which would be almost impossible without Oracle, and I could see certain disability groups getting rather annoyed about the most positive portrayal of a disabled person in comics being retconned out). The latter, sadly, seems very likely.

Not liking the new looks much. Superman looks about 15 and seems to have lost his red trunks and gotten a new, simplified S, Green Lantern doesn't appear to be wearing a ring and I presume Wonder Woman's new look is in order to comply with DC's new 'no bare legs on female characters' rule...

No bare legs? Big tits and everything else - but no bare legs? What's THAT all about?

Someone apparently sat down and thought a bit too hard about the logical consequences of Supergirl flying around above the heads of Metropolis's citizens in a mini-skirt, so DC overreacted as usual, I gather...

Well, I think it's high time Wonder Woman stopped dressing like a porn star. Thank goodness she's finally put some trousers on.

Blasphemy!

tony ingram wrote: I presume Wonder Woman's new look is in order to comply with DC's new 'no bare legs on female characters' rule...

They put trousers on Wonder Woman in the last relaunch a year or so back. And a leather jacket.
So this latest reboot is actually an improvement !

Looks similar to the costume from the recent unsold TV pilot.

Hmm - Lynda Carter dressed as WW in a porn film. I'd never have thought of that...nice one, Luce!

You're just teasing me. I'm far too dignified to rise to the bait.

Er...I think you just did!!

No I never. Go and jump in a bucket

I don't see the problem with Wonder Woman. Is she not a shining example of liberated femininity?



Much like these other ladies, in fact?

It would need to be a BIG bucket to fit all those lovely ladies in - and Lynda, too!
Luce - what have you started here??!!

Who are these girls Tony? And when are they on film?

GBF wrote:Who are these girls Tony? And when are they on film?

Sadly, never; there are, in fact, a number of somewhat specialized websites out there dedicated to superhero cosplay. Basically, people who like dressing up (or in the case of the invisible Woman, who basically seems to be wearing body paint, un-dressing up) as comic characters. Supergirl seems to be a favourite, for some reason, as does Catwoman...

Google Veidt.com if you dare.

Some of us read comics for the plot.

Lucy McGough wrote:Some of us read comics for the plot.

I take it you never read anything published after 1990, then?

I saw a young girl in my village in a Wonder Woman costume the other day, come to think of it.

Anyway I might have a go at the 'new' Superman and Batman, as they are the most famous, if I can be bothered.

Superman is the one that I have the most misgivings about. It's rumoured a lot of his backstory could be changed.

Well, the full list of titles is out now (including some truly bizarre choices-who on Earth decided an 'I, Vampire' book would sell?) and it does seem to be a complete reboot. Worse still, the Golden Age characters, including the JUstice Society, seem to be gone. And since the GA history was the main thing that's kept me buying DC for 35 years, that means I'm gone as well. I won't be buying any more DC after August if this is indeed the case.

This relaunch has actually made me more interested in the DCU.* I'll probably buy the Green Lantern titles featuring Guy and Kyle. But I'll be well cross if the Martian Manhunter gets screwed over or neglected.



*Ducks to avoid missiles thrown by irate fans.

He's apparently in Stormwatch, which makes very little sense since he has no history with the former Wildstorm characters. But then, he may have a whole new history himself, anyway. It seems the only characters immune from change are the Green Lanterns, because they're Geoff Johns's pet project.

All except Alan Scott, of course. The original Green Lantern is apparently disposable...

I really dislike what I've heard of the Wildstorm characters. I don't want to read a comic rated 18

The Wildstorm characters are as forgettable as virtually everything introduced in the 90's. I don't know why DC even want them, except to appease Jim Lee.

If the "team up" stories are going to be stopped maybe there will be "new" ones starting after the characters have had a chance to run individually?

Which characters?

DC totally has screwed J'onn over.

Lucy McGough wrote:DC totally has screwed J'onn over.

I think DC has screwed everyone over.

He has no history with that team. All his history is with the League. That's the point of him. He's the heart of the League

Well, except for the period between 1970 and 1983 when he wasn't in the book at all...

You know what I mean

I'm not optimistic about the new JL (there's no longer an 'A', apparently; DC want to gain a more international audience) with or without J'onn.

So, the DC Comics Universe line is being comprehensively re-launched. From what I’ve read in the various teasers and promotional material, this looks like a major severance from its past legacy.

Being a comics fan from the Palaeozoic Era, DC re-lunches are nothing new to me. I recall the 1964 “New Look” for Batman initiated by Editor Julius Schwarz, and then there was the non-Amazonian Wonder Woman that appeared between 1968 and 1973, not to mention the reduced-power Superman who appeared in 1970 (when Kryptonite was removed from the DC Universe). But the biggest event was 1985’s Crisis on Infinite Earths. This was the series designed on one hand to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the company that was now DC Comics, and also striving to bring some consistency to the DC line by combining all the myriad parallel Earths into a single universe.

1985’s Crisis was successful in some ways, but also disappointing in others. I’m sure I’m among many who hated the loss of Earth-2’s history and how it impacted All-Star Squadron, notably the removal of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman from the WWII era series. (Note that during his later run on Wonder Woman in 1998, John Byrne managed to reintroduce Wonder Woman to the post-Crisis WWII JSA by using Queen Hippolyta as the 1940s wearer of the classic costume!] I did like the new imagining of Superman by John Byrne, and there were other good stories, but there were still a number of loose ends around the post-Crisis DCU. I’m not sure how long it took to reconcile Hawkman’s back story – was in both the JSA and JLA was he a Terran archaeologist or a Thanagarian policeman, or…? I’m not sure if we ever got a clear answer to the question of who exactly was Donna Troy. I believe the Zero Hour event series was charged with resolving some of the loose ends that had arisen from Crisis. (Did J’onn J’onnz ever get a consistent back story?).

Then 20 years after Crisis on Infinite Earths we get Infinite Crisis, 52, one Year Later, Countdiwn and Final Crisis. (Phew!) And one of the repercussions of all this was the recreation of the DC Multiverse, albeit with only52 parallel Earths this time as opposed to the multitude pre-Crisis. And if that wasn’t enough, Batman’s dead, but then he’s resurrected – didsn’t they do that with Superman in 1993? And the Blackest Night/Brightest Day takes its turn on re-jigging things in the DCU.

The summer of 2011 has been g highlighted by the Flashpoint story arc depicting an altered DC Universe (was this Earth-52+1 or something?). Now I think this was intended as a sort of “What If…?” series, after which the DCU would revert to how it was at the beginning of 2011. But now along comes the new DCU, which seems to be a complete reboot of everything.

I guess it’s just DC addressing the fact that the bulk of their audience stay with their product for a short time – say 5 years from 7 to 12, maybe, and then move onto other things. Consequently, every few years the company has to relaunch things to create new interest. It also gets over the perennial problem of characters not aging realistically – of Superman being perennially age 29, of which wars were being fought during the character’s career, of the impact of real world technology, etc, etc…

The new DCU doesn’t look too appealing, particularly as it doesn’t seem that long since things were shuffled about previously. Things seem to be built on shifting sands! Maybe I’m just an old dinosaur, but I after 50 years of following the DC characters I will bidding farewell to the superheroes of yesterday.

Thouughts? Memories?

I'm essentially in the same position. I've been reading DC since the early 70's and my particular obsession is the Golden Age characters, the JSA and their contemporaries and to an extent legacy characters like Infinity Inc. DC sadly now seems to be dumping all that history, 76 years of it, and that saddens me. After nearly forty years of following these characters, i've little interest n trying to invest emotionally in reimagined versions with none of the history, so for me the status of the JSA will be the deciding factor on whether I continue to buy DC or not. If they're gone, so am I.

And after all these years, I still have no idea precisely who Donna Troy is. But then, neither does Donna...

You and me both Tony. The Earth-2 JSA was always my favourite. I remember reading Flash #123 - "Flash of Two Worlds" back in '61-ish and following the groweth of the Earth-2 side of things over the ensuinbg 25 years or so..

The number of comics (DC or Marvel) that I read regularly has continued to drop significantly over the last decade. I guess I'll only be picking up "specials" and Archive type colletions now.

Oh, I just remembered - did anyone follow the recent DCUniverse Legacies series written by Len Wein? Given the impending re-launch, the Legacies series seems like a final farewell to the "old" DCU, it basically being a history of the post-1985 Crisis...

PhantomRambler wrote:And if that wasn’t enough, Batman’s dead, but then he’s resurrected – didsn’t they do that with Superman in 1993?

Point of order - strictly speaking, Batman wasn't dead. Omega Sanction, innit.

PhantomRambler wrote:You and me both Tony. The Earth-2 JSA was always my favourite. I remember reading Flash #123 - "Flash of Two Worlds" back in '61-ish and following the groweth of the Earth-2 side of things over the ensuinbg 25 years or so..

The number of comics (DC or Marvel) that I read regularly has continued to drop significantly over the last decade. I guess I'll only be picking up "specials" and Archive type colletions now.

Oh, I just remembered - did anyone follow the recent DCUniverse Legacies series written by Len Wein? Given the impending re-launch, the Legacies series seems like a final farewell to the "old" DCU, it basically being a history of the post-1985 Crisis...

The only problem being, they got a lot of the details wrong. John Stewart, for instance, became Green Lantern of sector 2814 before the Crisis, not afterwards. Same with the formation of Justice League Detroit.

Lucy McGough wrote:

PhantomRambler wrote:And if that wasn’t enough, Batman’s dead, but then he’s resurrected – didsn’t they do that with Superman in 1993?

Point of order - strictly speaking, Batman wasn't dead. Omega Sanction, innit.

I've never been entirely clear on that. Do Darkseid's Omega beams actually kill people, or not?

Lucy McGough wrote:

PhantomRambler wrote:And if that wasn’t enough, Batman’s dead, but then he’s resurrected – didsn’t they do that with Superman in 1993?

Point of order - strictly speaking, Batman wasn't dead. Omega Sanction, innit.

You are of course coorrect, Lucy. Perhaps I should have said Batman was apparently dead, after all that's how it was prsented. A bit more drastic than the Knightfall saga. Bats disappeared from the DCU present before eventually reappearing this time, as did Supes following his"Death".

Hmmm... just how many of DC's characters have apparently (or not) died and been resurrected? There's Barry Allen of course, and didn't Ollie Queen get blown to shreds until finally reinstated by Hal Jordan/Parallax?

I seem to recall back in the early days of the Marvel Age, that Stan Lee's maxim was "a character isn't dead unless you see the body!"

tony ingram wrote:

PhantomRambler wrote:Oh, I just remembered - did anyone follow the recent DCUniverse Legacies series written by Len Wein? Given the impending re-launch, the Legacies series seems like a final farewell to the "old" DCU, it basically being a history of the post-1985 Crisis...

The only problem being, they got a lot of the details wrong. John Stewart, for instance, became Green Lantern of sector 2814 before the Crisis, not afterwards. Same with the formation of Justice League Detroit.

I think that just illustrates the problems with the continuity. Maybe the story that Len Wein was telling wasn't the history represented by the post-Crisis and pre-52 era, but the "history" as DC wanted it to be post-Infinite Crisis and 52 etc...? When all things seemed to be up for grabs. I guess it's all probably a moot point now.

Does the DCU re-launch this year still have the 52 parallel Earths as its basis, or has that concept been dropped? And whatever happened to Hypertime?

Hypertime appears to be a dirty word now, but I gather Grant Morrison's Multiversity is still due to appear next year.

As for characters who've died (or seemed to, for prolonged periods) at one time or another, offhand there's Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman (who snuffed it and was elevated to godhood before being resurrected), Hal Jordan, Barry Allen, Ollie Queen, Ray 'Atom' Palmer, Aquaman, Martian Manhunter, Red Tornado, Ronnie Raymond, Hawkman and Hawkgirl, and of course the Elongated man is still dead...hmmm, that's almost all of the old JLA! I wonder how Zatanna and Black Canary escaped unscathed? Must be the fishnets...
Then there's Flash's Rogues Gallery, and Hawk and Dove of course. All of the 12 in Blackest Night, in fact...Captain Boomerang has actually died twice!