DC Reboots Universe

An anonymous reader writes "Bob Wayne, Senior Vice President of Sales at DC Comics, has written to comic book retailers saying: 'Many of you have heard rumors that DC Comics has been working on a big publishing initiative for later this year. This is indeed an historic time for us as, come this September, we are relaunching the entire DC Universe line of comic books with all new first issues. 52 of them to be exact.' In addition, some characters are going to be younger, some may be missing, relationships are being changed, and Grant Morrison will pen a new Superman title."

Comments

Less Successful than Other Reboots

[bronzey214]

Somehow I see this as being less successful than other reboots (like the Star Trek reboot) since they're essentially hitting the reset button on EVERYTHING. It's like a DC Big Bang.

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[Squiddie]

Well, it's not like they will gain a lot of new fans. Comic books aren't really popular even now that everyone is into superheroes and such. Meh, I'll check it out.

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[Ghostworks]

Do you see it being more successful than Crisis on two Earths, Crisis on Infinite Earths, and/or Infinity Crisis? This will be the second official universe reboot, and at least the third mass relaunch. Maybe more, I've lost track. This isn't like other franchise reboots, because other franchises don't get "hot swapped" this way. At the same time, it's not the first time and not a huge surprise to the fanbase, so I doubt you'll get a lot of major complaints.

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[tripleevenfall]

I remember Zero Hour as being a partial reboot and supposed to resolve many continuity issues in the mid 90s and in the mid 80s you had COIE, and IC partway between.

I wonder if they are just trying something new, as the comic industry surely is only a fraction of what it once was.

I wonder if any kids read comics anymore or if they are all too busy with higher-tech pursuits?

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[sumdumass]

That's actually a sign of the times.

Why work at reading and using your imagination to make a story seem real or realistic enough to be enjoyable when you can flip on the tube and watch someone else' version who already went through that effort.

And Don't take that as me ragging on the new generation at all. It's just a mark on how much CG and other technology has advanced the story telling of other media opportunities.

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[Amouth]

they don't call them "comics" but rather "graphic novels" and yes kids are reading them a lot.. just not nearly as many read the DC stuff as they used to .. now they are reading different verities. (think ones where they can relate to the person who is the "hero" or protagonist)

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it's amazing what you can do with a bit of "anonymous" military funding and an underlying mission to integrate recruitment of the youguns & prepare them for society policed by the army.
Reboot : Brought to you by your friendly neighborhood military off-shore shell corporation.

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[Anonymous Coward]

Like Alan Moore says, there's a difference between a "graphic novel" as in a novel that is presented in a graphical form and a monthly comic book. DC's mainline stuff (and Marvel's, for that matter) does not have an ending, does not really have a beginning, and generally doesn't really have any lasting development in the middle; any time anything actually happens it generally gets rolled back later. That isn't a "novel". I'm not sure what it is. But this sort of thing is why people don't take comics seriously.

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[MakinBacon]

I wonder if any kids read comics anymore or if they are all too busy with higher-tech pursuits?

I'm 21 years old, and I very rarely see anyone in my local comic shop who looks younger than myself (except on annual Free Comic Day), so no.

Most of my friends read Japanese Manga, and alot of them insist that Manga doesn't count as comics because there's a negative stigma associated with being a comics fan. Despite all the success that comic publishers have had with movies, they've still completely failed to convince the general population that reading comics is nothing to be embarrassed about, and that is why the industry is dying.

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[tverbeek]

The issues addressed by those partial reboots didn't address the existential question that faces DC (or Marvel) today. It isn't a question of whether Bruce Wayne saw his parents killed while coming home from a fancy cinema in the 1920s or coming home from a Blockbuster Video in the 1990s. The question is the distribution model used for delivering stories told using juxtaposed pictures and words. Starting over with a fresh, rebooted universe is just a much better way of getting the attention of potential new comics readers, compared to trying to interest them in issue #900-something of a series that's been going since the Great Depression, and constantly refers back to stories published before they were born.

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[tverbeek]

My point being: it's about the digital distribution, not the reboot.

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[Maxo-Texas]

The reboots and alcoholic and evil "heroes" drove me away from comics about 10 years ago.

Now I watch the animated Justice League and Batman on netflix.

Every reboot of a character made it harder to stay connected to them. Every repulsive anti-hero made me less interested in the genre.

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[camperdave]

Why does everyone mention the Star Trek reboot as successful? They made one movie, and that was a lackluster, pathetic piece of garbage. (Red Matter? Seriously? Building the Enterprise on the Earth's surface? Really?) If you want to point to a successful reboot, then point to Doctor Who (although that's more a continuation than a reboot).

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[oldmac31310]

Star Trek reboot? You mean Star Trek the Next Generation, right?

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[just_another_sean]

My kids read comics, I have three boys; 14, 10 and 6. The six year old we read to and only some of the titles as they can get a little edgy for that age. I have thousands of paper comics and thousands of CBR/Zs and my kids are allowed access to any of them (again with the exception of the 6 year old for now).

It was finding the CBR/Zs that made me dust off the old storage boxes and show them to my kids. Now they are hooked. There are a couple good online stores to buy from and there is a "Cosmic Comics" about two minutes drive from my house. Cool side note, their is another store called the Adventurer's Guild close by with RPG gear. The kids are always willing to hit one of those stores over game stop when allowance time comes if I suggest it. I don't always, there is some room in their life for games and we do that together as well.

If you only give your kids video games and netflix then that's all they'll do. If you expose them slowly to other pursuits like comics, reading in general (Lord of the Rings FTW!) and RPGs then I've found they'll take interest. The key is not forcing it, not taking the games and tv away and not making them feel bad if they say no. In other words to find a balance of all their interests. My son professed to loathe reading when he was 8; now he's 10 and my wife and I have a fun time getting him to put the books down and go to bed!

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[bronzey214]

I called it "successful" because it rejuvenated the series and got people my age (early 20s) interested who were not alive or old enough when the series first started. That, to me, is successful.

Also, I don't think the Enterprise was built on the Earth's surface in the new film.

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[bronzey214]

I was wrong - the beginning of the movie. Sorry.

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[TheRaven64]

The problem with comics is that they're somewhere in the gap between 'real' books and television. I find I can read a page of text in about the same time as a page of a comic book, yet I get far more out of the page of text. I doubt there are many people for whom a comic is the entertainment sweet spot.

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[Gerzel]

Nah this was just an accident. Someone tripped on the carpet and hit the big red button.

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[Crudely_Indecent]

The Star Trek reboot was unique in that the old universe initiated the new universe via unintentional time travel. It will be interesting to see how DC orchestrates the "Big Bang"...what will cause the reboot? Will they acknowledge within the comics that there was a reboot as was done in Star Trek?

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[TheRaven64]

The RedLetterMedia review of the new Star Trek film made a good point: it wasn't a Star Trek film, it was a Star Wars film that happened to be set in the Star Trek universe. In terms of the writing, pacing, and the production, it was pure Star Wars. Apparently there's going to be another film in the series, so it probably counts as successful.

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does everyone mention the Star Trek reboot as successful?

Because it was popular? More people saw it and liked it than any other Trek in decades?

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[Captain Splendid]

Every repulsive anti-hero made me less interested in the genre.

And it's all basically Frank Miller's fault. Unlike Moore, who was honestly interested in bringing some sort of realism and emotional honesty to the genre, Frankie just kept refining his particular right-wing obsessions until he got them as pure as he could in the Sin City books.

Everybody might have been inspired to reach for Moore's heights, but most of them couldn't get further than Miller's mediocrity, if that.

And then McFarlane and Liefeld showed up, at the worst possible time...

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[tverbeek]

I give comics to the kids who come to my door on Halloween.* Some are confused by these unfamiliar things, but most of them think it's great. Anyone who thinks that "kids don't read/like comics" is simply mistaken. The problem is that comics are not readily available to kids. DC's new digital distribution initiative (which is being promoted by overhauling the DCU at the same time) is their latest effort to correct that, and I wish them luck with it.

*At least I did until I ran out of the ones with fun, self-contained stories. Now all that's left are the 1990s-2000s grim never-ending soap opera issues.

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[GeekZilla]

Yeah, it was. You can just make out the name on the ship when the shuttle carrying the new cadets lifts off from the shipyards in Iowa (with Kirk and McCoy on board).

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[Forty Two Tenfold]

Imagine the flame-wars across the generation gap though!

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[suutar]

I always figured they decided "It's Star Trek, it _has_ to have time travel in it somewhere, and since this is going to wipe out the timeline with all the established time travel, we have to get some into the new timeline right up front." :)

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, You can't call one movie a rejuvenated series. Once the new television show gets underway, then we can talk. Oh wait, there isn't even one in the works.

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[SuricouRaven]

This is why comics fans took to calling them 'graphic novels.' An effort to escape the stigma.

It failed.

It's not the only genre to suffer the problem. The entire field of western animation is stuck in an age trap, with nothing produced except children's programming and no studio willing to make something for older audiences in a medium traditionally regarded as childish. Furries grumble about a similar problem in fantasy - anything with talking animals is regarded as childish in the same way, resulting in such problems as the publisher-mandated edits to Inherit the Earth to strip it of anything that might challenge the thinking of people over twelve. Video games in general used to have just the same problem, being regarded as a children-and-teens medium, but have had much more success in overcoming it as the players matured.

I have a 'porn switch' on my desk that kills the power to the monitors. It's not actually for porn - that's just the excuse. It says a lot that I would find my anime-viewing habbits so embarassing, I'd rather call it the porn-switch.

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[Darinbob]

Well the founding stories of superheroes tend to be vastly more interesting than their day to day activities, so it's good marketing that way. The long term fans my not like this. In a way this is like a TV series; those that watched Lost from the very start often enjoyed it, but those who tuned into the middle of a later season would be baffled and confused and stop watching. Now superheroes aren't that complex, but I find myself being baffled by some characters or wondering what the big deal is. When you have a nice starting point you can get a bigger market.

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[SuricouRaven]

Star Trek has had a few continuity problems of it's own. The building of the Enterprise on Earth is actually one of them, but it goes back further than the movie and into the nature of Starfleet. In the old TOS, Starfleet was seen as a multi-cultural force, something akin to the United Nations peacekeeping force. Loyal to federation princibles, open to all, and with command split between all of the Federation's members - no one species having control. Humans were one member among many, and newcomers at that. The headquarters were even located (IIRC) on a starbase, so as not to grant any member the prestige of having the HQ on their homeworld. A coalition of nominal equals.

As time progressed - through TOS, movies, spinoff series - the Federation became more and more Earth-centered. Humans in command, the headquarters in San Francisco along with the Academy. Eventually canon just established that the Federation had been founded entirely not just humans, but Americans, upon American ideals. This revision felt much better with the primarily US audience, playing to patriotism by returning their country to it's rightful place as ruler of the galaxy, but it goes against the original vision.

The construction of Enterprise as established by the series isn't actually far from Earth, but it wasn't on the surface. It was built at a starbase in orbit.

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[arisvega]

Marvel is making big bucks with their movies, so they want in.

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[SquareVoid]

I guess this goes to show you that you can't make everyone happy all the time. Frank Miller doesn't necessarily convert everything he touches to gold, but he is personally responsible for reviving batman into the character he is today. At least give him some credit.

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[Anonymous Coward]

does not have an ending, does not really have a beginning, and generally doesn't really have any lasting development in the middle; any time anything actually happens it generally gets rolled back later. That isn't a "novel". I'm not sure what it is.

I believe you just gave a wonderful description of a soap opera. They survived the transition from radio to television, and some are still going on strong, but many have died off... and very few people take them seriously.

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[Goaway]

Star Trek has had a few continuity problems of it's own. The building of the Enterprise on Earth is actually one of them, but it goes back further than the movie and into the nature of Starfleet. In the old TOS, Starfleet was seen as a multi-cultural force, something akin to the United Nations peacekeeping force. Loyal to federation princibles, open to all, and with command split between all of the Federation's members - no one species having control. Humans were one member among many, and newcomers at that. The headquarters were even located (IIRC) on a starbase, so as not to grant any member the prestige of having the HQ on their homeworld. A coalition of nominal equals.

Sure, it's been a long time since I watched TOS, but I sure don't remember seeing any of that in there.

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[camperdave]

Because it was popular? More people saw it and liked it than any other Trek in decades?

All that means is that it was a popular movie. It doesn't mean the Star Trek Universe has been successfully rebooted. You can't tell that without a successful second and third movie or a multi-season TV series. In other words, does the reboot have enough merit to outlive the hype. If it does, then it can be called successful.

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[Culture20]

It even had an r2d2 cameo!

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[hawguy]

Building the Enterprise on the Earth's surface? Really?

Why wouldn't you? The ship (at least one (or some) versions) is designed to land on planets, so it has to be able to withstand gravity. By building on the ground, you're eliminating the need to either build a huge pressurized hangar in outer space, or force thousands of workers to don mobility impairing space suits when they go to work.

Submarines aren't built underwater, why should a spaceship be built in space?

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[Skarecrow77]

Manga readers are more highly regarded than comics readers? since when?

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[Skarecrow77]

your kids read LOTR? really?

The Hobbit I could see. I picked up the Hobbit at age 12 and thoroughly enjoyed it. I then tried to read Fellowship and promptly banged into a brick wall of boredom. I tried a few years later in college as a young adult, and this time Tom Bombadil ground the experience to a halt.

It wasn't until I actually got the unabridged audio book version in my 20s to listen to while working that I was able to finally hear the full story.

Don't get me wrong, it's not a -reading- thing. It's a Tolkein thing. LOTR, and Fellowship especially, is a real tough read. During the times I couldn't bring myself to plod through Fellowship, I read the entire narnia series, the entire dragonlance series (at that time), and any number of other sci-fi/fantasy books. If your kids stuck with Tolkein, more power to them.

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[Rakarra]

Mmm, a number of Pixar films might be more meaningful to adults than they are to kids (Ratatouille, Up). But I get what you mean especially with anime -- the juvenile tropes in many animes might be why I find it so difficult to get into any anime series. As much as I adored Space Battleship Yamato and the works of Miyazaki and Satoshi Kon, most other series, OVAs, etc.. I just feel so disconnected from.

Either the themes are utterly ridiculous and melodramatic (teenage girl market) or they're juvenile and sexist (teenage boy market).

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[Rakarra]

Yes, I was an X-Men fan when I was a kid. Loved the "all new, all different" X-Men introduced in the mid-70s. The series was still strong through the 80s, seemed to lose its way a big in the early 90s, then Liefeld and Morrison took over and the 90s became a horrible time for the X-comics in general.

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[Rakarra]

Sorry, You can't call one movie a rejuvenated series. Once the new television show gets underway, then we can talk. Oh wait, there isn't even one in the works.

That's probably a good thing. Star Trek doesn't need another television series, at least not for a good, long, time.

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[Rakarra]

Star Trek reboot? You mean Star Trek the Next Generation, right?

That's a continuation. A reboot takes the original story and characters and retells it in a different manner.

Gene Roddenberry himself endorsed the idea decades ago, when a reporter asked him about the future of Star Trek, he said that he envisioned someone taking Star Trek and doing it all over again -- but bigger and better. And he wished them well. Link

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[osu-neko]

Eventually canon just established that the Federation had been founded entirely ... upon American ideals.

And by "eventually", you mean right from the original series onward. Frankly, if you ever watched the original series, many episodes (for example, The Omega Glory from season 2) make that point abundantly clear. If anything, the various subsequent series have evolved away from the most obvious and pronounced Americentric jingoism that was part of Trek's founding DNA. It's gone in the opposite direction as you suggest over the years, but never entirely shed it, which is why you still find examples all along the way.

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[dakameleon]

I don't think anyone ever contended that all anime was a cut above western animation - the majority of anime will support an audience beyond the "cartoon" stage, but anime that attracts an older audience only comes along once in a while. If you're 35 in Japan and mention you watch anime regularly, the genre is going to matter - watching the teenage market shows is just as laughable as it would be here, but there are anime that are the equivalent of your evening dramas, cop procedurals etc. They're just harder to find.

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[flyneye]

I think I like the way it was originally handled with the "golden age" heroes intermingled with the active crew. Just like everywhere, the next generation in the office/factory/organization loses the original passion and direction of those who rocked before them. Some innovation may occur, but the next cooks spoil the broth and the stockholders demand they cook more with renewed vigor. The old recipe is lost with the cooks as anyone with a FOOM card from the old Kamadi days can testify.

I collected much DC and all the "Crisis on Infinite Profit Margins" garbage along with Marvel titles, Complete collections of some.. Came off it when I got homeless but friends stashed some old Marvel and all my underground stuff which I still have. I found integrity and fine art that I bought comixs for is in the underground. I haven't actually bought a title in more than a decade, but I dig some out every now and then and blow my kids minds.( Some titles they won't see for years and some they won't see at all. ) I even have the first few years of Heavy Metal which I treasure most. Yeah, the mainstream just seems to suck more and more as I grow older.

Thank God for old comix and the underground. I can't believe what they sucker people into paying what they do for mainstream comics now. Seriously when we can see something half as good as Frazetta or Kirby, maybe they would be worth half what they charge. Bah!

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[Larryish]

Your kid reads for fun in elementary school?

That is refreshing. We are not "Idiocracy" yet.

+1 Internets for you, sir.

Have some chicken.

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[MakinBacon]

Well, I can't back up my claims with any statistics or hard evidence, but I can say that growing up in the 00's and the late 90's I've had plenty of friends who read Japanese comics, but people who read American comics are few and far between.

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[mattack2]

The entire field of western animation is stuck in an age trap, with nothing produced except children's programming and no studio willing to make something for older audiences in a medium traditionally regarded as childish.

Why don't you count TV? The Simpsons, South Park, Family Guy, "and the rest"(*).

(*) Gilligan's Island allusion... but for the purposes of this discussion, I really mean the other Fox Sunday shows.

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[graymocker]

Really? Here's an non-exhaustive list of adult western animation: Archer. South Park. The Boondocks. Family Guy. Simpsons. Some of the items on my list are positively hip and on the cutting edge of cool. (Archer, for instance.)

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[Maxo-Texas]

I was a fan of Kamandi, last boy on earth.

Somewhere along the way the heros stopped being heroes and got all dark and I didn't identify with them any more.

I've seen Heavy Metal floating around online so it's out there electronically.

Sorry to hear you went through some hard times. Seems like life is harder than it was in the 80's too.

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[TheCouchPotatoFamine]

er... really? your comment imagines that a ship in space should take the stress of a deep gravity well. I'd believe cobbwebs over scrith anyday, for what the future will bring.

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[Ihmhi]

Agreed. The only comics I can enjoy are Deadpool and Squirrel Girl, simply because they're outlandish and ludicrous.

Imagine how much more interesting Batman or Spider-Man would be if the villains were put down for good. You'd have constantly new stuff, you could build things up into these big, interested arcs... but we'll never see it happen.

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[hawguy]

er... really? your comment imagines that a ship in space should take the stress of a deep gravity well. I'd believe cobbwebs over scrith anyday, for what the future will bring.

My comment doesn't imagine anything, I'm talking about a known (fictional) starship - we *are* talking about the Starship Enterprise, right? The starship that (at least in some versions) was designed with landing struts:

http://www.foundation3d.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11037

You can argue that there's no reason to design a starship such that it can land on a planet, yet the fictional builders of the Enterprise apparently feel differently. After all, these are the guys that decided to build it on the planet's surface.

I could be persuaded that there's no reason to design it to withstand gravity - why don't you give me some rough calculations of the stresses on the hull of a ship at Warp 9 compared to the stresses encountered at rest in earth gravity. I haven't done the calculations myself, but I bet you'll find that gravitational stresses are minuscule compared to warp drive induced stresses. So there's no reason not to build the ship on earth.

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[The Dawn Of Time]

Not to pile on or anything, but you pretty clearly aren't actually watching any western animation if you think it's all for kids.

It sure isn't like anime, I'll grant you that. If that's the only genre you consider "adult" then yeah, stay away.

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[just_another_sean]

Yeah, my older son did not read it until he was late 13, into 14. But my 10 year old tends to latch on to what the older boy does so he's into it now. As of now he is reading the Two Towers (which IMHO contain some of the best and worst parts of the Trilogy, love the Helm's Deep stuff!).

Funny how you described it; when I first read it I was also about 12 but I was totally hooked. I reread it a few years later and remember thinking how painfully long and excruciatingly detailed the chapters on Frodo's and Sam's journey to Mordor was. Like watching grass grow. I then reread it in my twenties and found the detail to be interesting again (more in a appreciative of the classic writing style kind of way), if still a bit long.

It took a while to convince the kids to give LotR a try but they made it through all of Harry Potter so at that point they were more willing to try a 1000+ page story.

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[Dragoness Eclectic]

I read LOTR in 4th grade. Teachers were concerned because I was reading material "inappropriate for my age level"-- it was supposed to be too hard for me to understand, and they thought my parents had pushed me into it. My mother told them if I was reading it, it was because I wanted to, and I obviously could read it or I wouldn't be reading it.

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[TheCouchPotatoFamine]

lol, i'll spare the ultramath but good answer :)

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[camperdave]

That link says that the saucer section has landing pads. The saucer section on a Constitution class vessel could be severed from the rest of the ship, but that was barely ever done because it could only be re-attached at a space dock.

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[camperdave]

You should give Moby Dick a go some time.

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[stonewallred]

I first read the Hobbit, then the LOTR before I was 8 years old. Of course, I learned how to read sort of young. My sister was 5 and in kindergarten and I was 3.

Everyday when she came home, I made her play school and teach me everything she learned that day.

And all my family members were/are readers. Mom, dad, grandparents on both sides, uncles and cousins.

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[Anonymous Coward]

While not the Enterprise Voyager lands on, and takes off from, a planet in (at least) one episode. And yes, it looks extremely silly.

Re:Less Successful than Other Reboots

[Anonymous Coward]

Still a comic. Just a different format. No motion involved, just panel by panel with word and thought baloons still. Don't see how it makes the genre different other than making it more handy to have with you.

In Soviet Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Comic Book Universe reboots YOU!

Ran out of ideas?

[jandrese]

I guess they can buy themselves some time by just retelling all of the origin stories again just in case readers missed them the first (or second, or third) time around and missed the movie and were under a rock for their entire life. Certainly much easier than simply retiring the characters and thinking up entirely new stories to tell with new characters that aren't weighed down by decades of cruft.

Re:Ran out of ideas?

[The Great Pretender]

Just in time for Hollywood to remake them all...

Re:Ran out of ideas?

[elrous0]

retelling all of the origin stories again just in case readers missed them the first (or second, or third) time

At this point, I think it's more like dozens (for some of the bigger characters). Comic books make soap operas look modest when it comes to the silly deus ex machina plot devices to kill-off and return characters, redo their origins, retroactively change their histories, etc. Superman alone must have at least a hundred "origins" by now (especially if you count all the alternate universe Supermen, versions in different media, etc.).

Personally, I wish they would return to all the politically-incorrect storylines and eras they've swept under the rug over the decades. I would love to see Captain American fight the buck-toothed Japs again, or let the commie menace know what's for at least one more time! And whatever happened to all those great ghetto superheroes from the 70's that used to say "Right on!" all the time and fight with switchblades?

Re:Ran out of ideas?

[Anonymous Coward]

From comic book writer Mark Waid:
"The 50,000+ hardcore fans of periodical print comics that we have left, the ones we haven’t and can’t drive away, seem to indicate with their buying patterns that they’re interested only in nostalgia, which is terrifying. And I understand why publishers cater to that; they’re kinda forced to, given that the print distribution system is targeted SOLELY TO THOSE 50,000."

Reboots caters to nostalgia - revisit origins and retell old favorites with a new spin, without having to push your readers too far out of their comfort zones.

Of course, comic books are absolutely perfect for creating and testing completely new stories, and hopefully DC will now meet customers who want that.

Re:Ran out of ideas?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps if the copyrights expired earlier, they'd do something original.

Re:Ran out of ideas?

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the places where Asian comics (manga) come out ahead. Sure a lot of cliches are re-used, but given that it's far easier to get into the comic industry there or to become an amateur and start selling on your own (doujinshi), there's far more breadth in terms of stories, plots, what have ye.

The fact is, a vast majority of Western comics seem to be superhero focused. Eastern comics, however...actually huh. Shonen, or boy's manga, also seems to be heavily superhero focused. Character A has superpowers and goes around saving the world. Normally there's an overarching meta arc that leads the character from battle to battle though instead of actively going out and stopping crimes. Since Eastern comics are published in black and white, they can get a lot more pages and story out for much cheaper. Your average manga is about 20 pages weekly or 50 pages monthly.

Really the main reason comics are so successful in Asia while struggling in the West is due to the stigma that comics in the West are for children and adults shouldn't be reading them. And if you should happen to release comics for adults in the West, instead of deeper, more emotional stories, you just get sex and gore which doesn't exactly help make it an elevated literary form.

Re:Ran out of ideas?

[Darinbob]

Even well known comics characters can be confusing. Ie, people who don't live under rocks may still think Robin is still Dick Grayson under the mask. They'll pick up a modern issue and be confused because it conflicts with the popular notion of what the characters are (popular meaning outside the rarified world of fandom).

Re:Ran out of ideas?

[Superdarion]

Well, if you read this page about superheroes debuts, you'll see that they keep trying and trying. Maybe people don't really care that much about superheroes anymore, except for the already famous ones.

Or maybe, the new ones aren't that famous precisely because they don't have decades of decades of cruft.

Re:Ran out of ideas?

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree. This is how people tell stories. They tell the same stories over and over again over generations, with variations here and there-- sometimes big variations, sometimes small variations, and sometimes a big enough variation to be considered a "new story". Even the "new stories" contain components of the old. We say they were inspired by the old stories, or they're adaptations or retellings. Sometimes we say they're rip-offs, but the "new stories" aren't all-new.

In my opinion, the bigger problem in comic books (bigger than a lack of originality, that is) is the desire for continuity. There's an attempt to shoehorn every retelling together, to have it all appear in the same universe (which is to say, the same multiverse) and tied up in a little bow. Even in this break with continuity, DC is making it an official "reboot", trying to make it a definitive occasion instead of part of a larger scheme of constant retelling. I'd lay money that it all gets retconned into the larger multiverse anyway.

I don't think iconic characters like Superman and Batman are "weighed down by decades of cruft". They have rich histories for writers to draw from, but you have to let writers go their own way. Let there be constant "reboots" of these stories if writers are inspired to do it. Do more things like DC's "Elseworlds" line, and never place them in any multiverse. Let them stand as they are. Do cool, fun, interesting stuff.

Re:Ran out of ideas?

[TheCouchPotatoFamine]

^^Like, +5 interesting.

Re:Ran out of ideas?

[MikeUW]

Don't forget the TV/cartoon series...or series of series. I think you'd have to be living under a rock, that is itself lodged underneath another larger rock, to have not been exposed to the majority of comic superhero stories.

Re:Ran out of ideas?

[jandrese]

Superman has Super-Ventriloquism, among thousands of other retarded powers that writers have dreamed up over the years. That's the kind of cruft I'm referring to.

52

[TimeElf1]

They seem really stuck on this 52 number. Really folks 42 is the better number. I can't really see this taking off I think it might turn into another Superboy punch.

Re:52

[corbettw]

Pfft, everyone knows 53 is the best number. It's like 42, but it goes to 11.

Re:52

[tepples]

Really folks 42 is the better number.

I'll believe you (and the rest of Douglas Adams's fandom) when you give us ideas for what to do with the other ten weeks.

Re:52

[suutar]

52 makes me wonder if they're going to do something dumb like relaunch one per week, which means a whole year of mixed continuity, which will turn off those new fans they're hoping to pull in...

Re:52

[SuricouRaven]

I'm not a huge comics fan, but didn't they try that already? I think they called the series just "52." It was largely a tidying up of the tangled continuity, and noteable for having the Big Bad be a superintelligent caterpillar. Yes, you have to be a comics fan to see how that works.

Re:52

[porges]

Supposedly it's 13 relaunches per week over the four weeks of a comic-book month.

Re:52

[dcollins]

Assuming your 42 starts at 0. My 42 is even better, it starts at 1, so its 11 is 52.

Re:52

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Really folks 42 is the better number.

I'll believe you (and the rest of Douglas Adams's fandom) when you give us ideas for what to do with the other ten weeks.

Simple answer: 10 week bender.

Origin Stories

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh god, does this mean DC has caught hollywood fever and will be doing 52 origin stories?

Re:Origin Stories

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

That would be great! I've always wondered where Superman came from. And I'm really looking forward to the trading card duel between Batman and the Joker. And the battle between the Justice League and the Decepticons should be EPIC!!!

retcon 2.0

[senorpoco]

ultimate mega crisis in forever universes infinite something something.

Re:retcon 2.0

[tm2b]

More like 4.0. But eventually they will start bringing in old stories, and just say that this was another possible path in Hypertime, or some such. They can't turn their back on decades of character history forever.

"If they don't stop picking at it, it will never heal." - JMS on comic book continuity reboots (around the time of the Legion's ... 3rd? 4th? reboot)

Old fans

[Hatta]

Sounds like a good way to alienate old fans. "What, you mean the decades of backstory I've been following is now entirely irrelevant?" I suppose it could help bring in new fans, by lowering the barrier to entry. But I don't see this offsetting the disillusioned older fans.

If you're going to reboot a universe, do it like Doctor Who did it, and not like Star Trek. Respect the decades of canon, and you have a built in fan base. Change the authors, the visual style, whatever, just don't mess with canon.

Re:Old fans

[Reverand Dave]

Bringing in Frank Miller to redo Batman was a phenomenal success for a geed reason. It brought in a new perspective with new art and a darker look. They don't have to start with a clean slate. To me this reeks of a disconnected corporate decision.

Re:Old fans

[the Atomic Rabbit]

Bringing in Frank Miller to redo the goddamn Batman

Fixed that for ya.

Re:Old fans

[Ghostworks]

"Sounds like a good way to alienate old fans."

This is DC. Disregard Continuity. They were official labeling all their Golden Age characters as "from Earth 2" (Earth 1 being home to the new version who got to stick around) when Marvel was really starting to take off. Plus, DC also has the most successful elseworlds/what if books. Their characters are brands, so small changes don't really phase fans much. New Batman versus old Batman vs. golden age Batman vs. cowboy Batman vs Batman who fights Aliens and Predator are all basically batman. The stories, minor characteristics, and supporting characters all change from writer to writer anyway. I dare say there is no fanbase that would be affected less by such a major change.

Re:Old fans

[LighterShadeOfBlack]

Sounds like a good way to alienate old fans.

You assume that there are old fans. I imagine if sales weren't dwindling they wouldn't be doing this at all.

As far as the "decades of canon" goes, is there such a thing? I don't really follow comics but as I understand it both DC and Marvel routinely rewrite their universes with "biggest threat evar!" crossover storylines that totally change things so as to make everything that went before moot anyway.

Am I wrong?

Re:Old fans

[sheehaje]

I actually really enjoyed the Star Trek reboot. I know it flew in the face of years of back story, but it was as entertaining (if a bit campy) story as I've seen in the Star Trek universe. I think I'm learning to live with all my childhood shows, stories and heroes for that matter being brought back in different light as long as what comes of it is entertaining to me and my family. I guess it's better than it being faded out entirely. I still don't forgive Lucas for not seizing the opportunity to really update Star Wars with a really exciting prequel. To me that wasn't entertaining and painful to watch. Star Trek on the other hand proved to exceed my expectations, even though I knew it flew in the face of Gene Roddenberry's vision.

Re:Old fans

[Anonymous Coward]

You are correct. DC's figures show they make vastly more money on #1 issues (well, durr) and reboots to start new (sometimes parallel) stories using very well know characters. After a while the sales tank, so they repeat. This time they're doing it all in one go.

Re:Old fans

[dhermann]

If you're going to reboot a universe, do it like Doctor Who did it, and not like Star Trek.

Yeah, Star Trek was a huge, unmitigated disaster that made $385 million in gross revenue. I can see how a corporation would find the Doctor Who model much more attractive.

Re:Old fans

[tverbeek]

The roughly 50K remaining fans who are obsessed with nothing but whether or not the "backstory" they've been reading will "count" anymore are worth risking.

Re:Old fans

[redemtionboy]

It gets ridiculous later in the series though when it's been running for decades. I wish marvel would do the same. Flash Thompson was in the vietnam war for god's sake.

Re:Old fans

[Culture20]

They were official labeling all their Golden Age characters as "from Earth 2" (Earth 1 being home to the new version who got to stick around) when Marvel was really starting to take off.

Marvel showed them up by making the default Marvel continuity "Earth 616". That's 308 times as big!

Re:Old fans

[MakinBacon]

I believe they did something like this in the eighties with Crisis on Infinite Earths, except they didn't restart the numbering.

As for messing with the canon, it's not like they don't already constantly retcon things and release new versions of the origin stories.

Re:Old fans

[badboy_tw2002]

Eh, TNG (latter half) and DS9 both flew in the face of Gene Roddenberry's vision, and we were better off for it. You might say "Voyager" but then I might say "What? What's that? You mean V'Ger? No, not the best movie of them, but better than 3 or 5."

Re:Old fans

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck canon.

Canon in DC comics these days is a gigantic, unwieldy burden and the fans who insist on going forward with it (rather than simply remembering it fondly, even going back to read it now and again) are like that ladycreature in Labyrinth with the giant pile of crap on her back.

Long-successful comic stories have become modern mythology. There's no reason to treat them as history. All the best stuff DC has done in the past ten years has been with that in mind, all those random out-of-continuity one-offs with good art and writing that simply leveraged the mythos in to good storytelling.

The alternative to mythology, of course, is ACTUAL continuity, where characters who've been superheroing for fifty years grow old and die...

Re:Old fans

[LWATCDR]

Except they kind of have too. Superman and Batman would both be what? 80 or 90 years old now? Iron Man would be at least 60 or 70. Green Arrow would be in his 50s or 60s. You would need new people for each role and a new backstory for them For some like Superman you could just make immortal but for and some like Batman and and Green Arrow would be possible but other with super powers you would have problems with. Do they get married and have kids and pass it down or what?

Re:Old fans

[elrous0]

What superhero hasn't been reinvented at least once in "decades"? Shit, I think Batman has had three costume changes just this month.

Re:Old fans

[Anonymous Coward]

In the Doctor Who re-boot, the Doctor actually re-booted the entire universe.....

I wanna see Superman pull that one off...

Re:Old fans

[Quiet_Desperation]

I'm always willing to give a reboot a chance.

Heck, as much as I loved it, I'd like to see someone reboot Reboot. Vastly better CGI today, and lots more fodder for the silly puns and inside jokes. Having the characters show up in a casual game would be awesome.

Enzo: We do what now?
Bob: You click the cow.
Dot: ...and?
Bob: I think that's it.
Enzo: How do we beat the user?
Bob: I think the user... is the cow.
Dot: So how do we end the game and get out of here?
Bob: I... um... ah! Glitch! Captive bolt pistol!
Cow: Zoinks!

Re:Old fans

[Anonymous Coward]

They were official labeling all their Golden Age characters as "from Earth 2" (Earth 1 being home to the new version who got to stick around) when Marvel was really starting to take off.

Marvel showed them up by making the default Marvel continuity "Earth 616". That's 308 times as big!

Mark of the beast to boot. Gotta love Marvel's sense of flair

Re:Old fans

[metacell]

Sort of wrong, sort of right. DC rewrites their universe with increasing frequency since the 80's, but their changes are of the type "assume everything is the same except for the things we explicitly say are different". So the books keep relying on decades of backstory, and keep being inaccessible to new readers - plus become a lot more confusing due to conflicting continuity changes.

Marvel is much better in this regard - their reboots are temporary and have a clear beginning and ending. For example, a time-traveller or reality-warping mutant changes the Marvel universe, and all the books are affected for a number of months, then go back to normal when reality is restored.
Marvel's new Sentry character is retroactively inserted in the Marvel universe with decades of backstory, but this is a small change compared to DC's reboots.

Re:Old fans

[knghtrider]

Perfect analogy--The Doctor is still the same--minus the baggage of the stuffy old Time Lords; but still with his age-old nemeses still around. Although, they did overuse the Daleks and Cybermen a bit..

Re:Old fans

[Anonymous Coward]

They could, I dunno, have them just die already and then create new characters? Maybe if they were willing to permanently kill someone off now and then they could also fit, like, a character development arc in there, in between the origin and the retirement? Nah, that's crazy talk. Better to keep the characters static, rewrite the beginning of the story, and never have an ending, instead "rebooting" once enough people give up reading that it puts your whole business in jeopardy.

Re:Old fans

[Anonymous Coward]

Correction, Star Trek was a huge, unmitigated disaster that made $385 million at the box office. It's made about another half a billion on home release.

Re:Old fans

[Aeros]

Another thing that has turned off a lot of old fans and new fans alike is the price. We used to be able to go to the comic book store with $10 and get a dozen or two stories. Now your lucky if you get 2 or 3 for $10. At least DC has got back to the $2.99 price point where Marvel sticks to $3.99. Yes the quality is MUCH better but seriously, one of the big factors in loss of sales is the high price point.

Re:Old fans

[camperdave]

Do you want to make $385 million in one shot, or do you want to make $30 million an episode, 16 episodes per year, for the next 30 years? But that's beside the point. That's restructuring the franchise, not rebooting the universe.

Re:Old fans

[Anonymous Coward]

It gets ridiculous later in the series though when it's been running for decades. I wish marvel would do the same. Flash Thompson was in the vietnam war for god's sake.

Its called Ultimate Spider-Man. Though that series has been going on 10+ years.

Re:Old fans

[Anonymous Coward]

What Canon? there are dozens of versions of superman, dozens of backstory's for the majority of the DC heroes, and that doesn't even include erased memories, clones, or alternate universes.

It's rather odd to talk about Canon, when the majority of their product line for any hero doesn't conform to any specific canon.

Re:Old fans

[MMC Monster]

You haven't read DC in the last couple decades, have you?

Every few years they keep destroying the universe and rewriting continuity.

Just sit back and enjoy the ride. And don't ask about Supergirl, Power Girl, and Hawk Girl. Their histories are the ones that get screwed the most.

Re:Old fans

[Eponymous Hero]

yes, yes you are. but it's ok. it was bound to happen when you admittedly make presumptions about things which you know not. because at least you show signs of understanding that you were having a dumb thought, plus your sig contains the appropriate disclaimer about stupid comments.

I don't really follow comics so the way that I misunderstand it both DC and Marvel routinely rewrite their universes...

ftfy

Re:Old fans

[Archibald Buttle]

Except you can't reboot a universe like Doctor Who, because they did not reboot the universe.

The new series that started a few years back is the exact same universe that Doctor Who has always been in. Every previous generation (including Paul McGann's 8th Doctor who only had one on-screen outing) is still there, and the entire prior history of The Doctor remains. All of the previous regenerations have appeared on-screen in the new series, and plenty of references have been made to events in The Doctor's past. (Technically they did reboot the universe in a recent-ish story in the new Doctor Who series, but that was a plot device.)

Doctor Who restarted the series, rather than doing a universe reboot. In doing so they left out a sizeable chunk of time in The Doctor's life, leaving us with legends of a great time war. The only type of "reboot" that Doctor Who had was a production reboot where they've re-thought how to present stories.

Rebooting a universe in a series by definition means throwing away the original canon to free the writers from the shackles of the past. IMHO that's not always a bad thing. I'm a huge Star Trek fan and I love that they've rebooted that universe, since IMHO it really needed it. The next-gen timeline had become absurd, what with Voyager becoming an über-ship, and the over-use time-travel. Whilst I know some people got upset, I personally thought that the manner of the reboot in Star Trek was very respectful of the original canon.

Re:Old fans

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're going to reboot a universe, do it like Doctor Who did it

Doctor Who was never rebooted, only refreshed.

Unless you're referring to the climax of series 5, when the Doctor actually did reboot the universe...

Re:Old fans

[LighterShadeOfBlack]

My sig also explains any grammatical errors I might make in my posts. It does not excuse yours. You may also want to look up the meaning of the word presumption.

Re:Old fans

[Mindcontrolled]

If they do it that way, sure - Frank Miller distilled the essence out of panamax supertanker loads of crap - and ended up with something decent. I like my comics, but I never really got into the DC or Marvel settings. They may be too American for this European here, dunno.

Re:Old fans

[Darinbob]

What about those fans who started reading in the 1930s? They've been disillusioned in the past many times, why is it such a crime to disillusion newer twenty something fans?

Re:Old fans

[LWATCDR]

They could but it is really hard to do that over and over again. Plus fans might hat that more.

Re:Old fans

[Anonymous Coward]

And don't ask about Supergirl, Power Girl, and Hawk Girl. Their histories are the ones that get screwed the most.

Well, it's no bloody wonder that everybody wants to screw Supergirl!

Re:Old fans

[jollyreaper]

Except you can't reboot a universe like Doctor Who, because they did not reboot the universe.

The new series that started a few years back is the exact same universe that Doctor Who has always been in. Every previous generation (including Paul McGann's 8th Doctor who only had one on-screen outing) is still there, and the entire prior history of The Doctor remains.

Technically you could do the same thing with the existing comics, new generations of classic characters. That's not a new idea. The Phantom is passed father to son for umpty dozen generations. A few times they've done that like with villains taking up the gimmick of predecessors. This would also mean that you could do a decent story arc. This is the story of Joe who is the Blue Bastard. Now his story is over. Dick is now the new Blue Bastard. And that would also make the one-of-a-kind characters more special. There's only ever been one Red Bastard. None came before and none will come after.

Only problem, comics are a business. They're not going to retire teats that might still have some milk left in 'em.

Re:Old fans

[Myopic]

I suppose you were REALLY pissed off when John Gardner wrote "Grendel". I bet you wept yourself to sleep when the Brothers Grimm bastardized all those long-loved children's tales.

Re:Old fans

[WuphonsReach]

Heck, as much as I loved it, I'd like to see someone reboot Reboot. Vastly better CGI today, and lots more fodder for the silly puns and inside jokes. Having the characters show up in a casual game would be awesome.

Yes but part of the fun was the campy CGI...

Which also made it possible to not take itself very seriously. If it were to get updated visuals and ultra-realistic CGI, it would probably also have to take itself a lot more seriously - which would not be good.

You can get away with a lot more "out there" things if your graphics are cartoon-like instead of life-like. As a similar example - WoW's graphics allow them to do things like steam engines, rocket cars, gnomish / goblin inventions. If WoW had more realistic graphics, ala Conan or RIFT, a lot of those inventions would look horridly out of place.

Re:Old fans

[NexusTw1n]

Except you can't reboot a universe like Doctor Who, because they did not reboot the universe...... (Technically they did reboot the universe in a recent-ish story in the new Doctor Who series, but that was a plot device.)

Make your mind up, did they or didn't they reboot the universe?

Here's your helping hint : It wasn't a plot device, but a deliberate decision by Moffat. who respected RTD's work bringing Who back, didn't want to be tied down by Russell's vision.

RTD rebooted Who by using the nebulous off camera "time war", while Moffat DID quite literally reboot the entire universe, flicking a giant reset switch that allows him to ignore anything RTD did he doesn't like.

This is how good writers make a mythology their own. They reboot in such a way as to please the ubernerds that require canon while taking the characters off in directions unemcumbered by half century of cruft.

Re:Old fans

[cpt kangarooski]

DC did that once. There was a series called Superman & Batman: Generations, which had Superman & Batman start their careers in the 1930's, and the story runs through to the 30th century. New Batmen come along pretty frequently, but as you expect, Superman (and his various descendants, who mainly also have superpowers) just keeps on keeping on.

It's worth a read.

Re:Old fans

[guspasho]

"Sounds like a good way to alienate old fans. "What, you mean the decades of backstory I've been following is now entirely irrelevant?""

This argument is, frankly, bullshit. Of course it isn't irrelevant. That back story isn't going anywhere. The series is just done. And it's about damn time, too. Enjoy rereading it, like everyone still enjoys rereading and rewatching stories told in every other medium. Write fan-fiction if you like.

DC should alienate the old fans. Or rather, they should stop trying to accommodate the old fans. The old fans who complain about canon are snobby curmudgeons who are more and more far removed from the industry's potential audience as they age and die off.

Marvel became wildly successful in the 1960s is because DC was already old and stale. DC was trying to apply character archetypes that were a generation old and no longer relevant to the people who were buying comics. They still do, even though they've adapted enough to survive. Marvel came in with Spider-Man and X-Men and characters that had an audience, characters that were relevant and not stale. The same is true of the reinvented, darker Batman of the 80s, Image in the 90s, and Ultimate Marvel in the 00s. Let the canon go and let the companies and characters write stories that relate to their audience.

If you want true canon and continuity all the characters from the Golden Age are dead of old age, all the characters from the Silver Age are in retirement homes, and all the characters of whatever they called the 90s have settled down with kids and a house and are "too old for this shit". Plus, it gets increasingly ridiculous and increasingly uninteresting the 3468th time that Batman faces off against the Joker. I mean really, how many times can you keep writing that and expect it to sell?

"If you're going to reboot a universe, do it like Doctor Who did it, and not like Star Trek."

The only reason this worked with Doctor Who, and nothing else, is that there are few constants. The TARDIS is a police box that's bigger on the inside, the Doctor rides around in it and is incredible, and picks up traveling companions that act as the conduit for the viewer, and that's about it. Everything else is subject to revision, and always has been. The companion changes, even the Doctor changes, not just the actor that plays him but his temperament and personality. If Doctor Who was American, this would be an outrage, and the series would have ended when William Hartnell died or left the series.

Re:Old fans

[Anonymous Coward]

DC comics are mainstream (i.e. movies franchises). New fans don't want to be associated with the older/original fans, i.e. fanboys. This gives new fans a chance to craft the direction. And if the material's good, the old fanboys will come along for the sake of loyalty. DC Comics is now (compared to 1960's) a corporation, they know how to manipulate the fanbase....

Re:Old fans

[tm2b]

Sort of, but not exactly. DC (Grant Morrison, specifically) created a structure under which the DC Universe operates: Hypertime. All stories ever written have actually taken place in Hypertime, just on different timeline "branches" - and branches can remerge. If two events on inconsistent, that just means that they were on different timelines (or one was a minor timeline that was reabsorbed by a main line).

Which they are going to be really glad of in a year or five, as old characters and old stories will be referred to. That has happened with every "reboot" - too many people have too much invested in the older stories. The Legion of Super-Heroes had it worst, I think, because they could be rebooted without affecting most of the other stories, except to a varying degree those involving Superman/boy (Kal-El), Superboy (Conner Kent), or Supergirl.

Re:Old fans

[Rakarra]

Eh, TNG (latter half) and DS9 both flew in the face of Gene Roddenberry's vision, and we were better off for it. You might say "Voyager" but then I might say "What? What's that? You mean V'Ger? No, not the best movie of them, but better than 3 or 5."

Wrath of Khan flew in the face of Roddenberry's vision and were better off for it!

Studio heads thought he had too much influence over the ridiculously-expensive Star Trek: The Motion Picture, so he was moved to "Executive Producer" (IE, no formal power) while writing and control were handed to writer/producer Harve Bennett and writer/director Nicholas Meyer.

Roddenberry was very much against Star Trek II's naval trappings. He thought it seemed too militaristic.

Re:Old fans

[X3J11]

If you're going to reboot a universe, do it like Doctor Who did it, and not like Star Trek. Respect the decades of canon, and you have a built in fan base. Change the authors, the visual style, whatever, just don't mess with canon.

The "new" Doctor Who is the "old" Doctor Who, regenerated. It's not a reboot, merely a continuation.

Re:Old fans

[Cylix]

Indeed, in one episode of JLA they brought back Crime Syndicate Amerika and the evil green lantern had simply sensed the universe had changed. Perhaps they mentioned it elsewhere or something else way later, but it was given no more mention. In fact, I'm not sure if that line just stopped or I somehow missed an episode because the arc just died.

At least in Green Lantern when a new writer would take over he would retire an awful arc fairly quickly.

Re:Old fans

[lennier]

Except you can't reboot a universe like Doctor Who, because they did not reboot the universe.

*Cough* Time war.
*Cough* Big Bang.

That's two *literal* universe reboots in the last five years of continuity.

Re:Old fans

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're going to reboot a universe, do it like Doctor Who did it, and not like Star Trek. Respect the decades of canon, and you have a built in fan base. Change the authors, the visual style, whatever, just don't mess with canon.

Doctor Who has never had a reboot. It's been one continuous show since it started. Reboot implies new origin story, etc. This has never happened on Doctor Who.

Re:Old fans

[Unkyjar]

It's been done. Maybe not with Superman, but it's been done in comics many, many, many times.

Re:Old fans

[The Dawn Of Time]

Yeah, that Star Trek will never last.

Re:Old fans

[Eclipse-now]

I have to agree with you sheehaje, the Star Trek retelling was a great job and I hope they go for it with sequels. But — sing it with me —"George Lucas raped my childhood..."

Re:Old fans

[naoursla]

I remember buying comics books for $0.75 in the late '80's. Then they went to $0.85. Then $1.00 a year later. Then $1.25 a year after that. Within 10 years they had gone up to $3.00. The changes included better paper and printing, but in retrospect I think that was mostly an excuse. The prices increased way faster than inflation.

Re:Old fans

[AmiMoJo]

They keep re-hashing the same characters because they sell. I doubt it is a coincidence that the new Batman film is due out soon, and I bet the new comic book Batman will look more like the film version. They are hoping to gain more readers off the back of it and people won't be happy if they are faced with decades of back-story needed to understand the first comic they ever bought.

Plus reboots have proven popular in cinemas and on TV, and as long as the new version is well done. It's a shame "next generation" sequels rarely work, Star Trek being one of the few exceptions.

Re:Old fans

[Eponymous Hero]

w/e i do what i want. disclaimers are for pussies like yourself. another one takes the bait...

i don't have to look up the meanings to words i already know, that should be self explanatory. if you can't see that i used it correctly then you might want to look it up yourself. i admire your baiting effort though. you might make rookie status someday.

Re:Old fans

[cbybear]

Agreed. I've read DC comics for 36+ years (started with the Flash) and I'm as excited as ever about the reboot. As long as good stories are told, does it really matter? The continuity will come back in the form of old names with new facades and different perspectives. I managed to survive Crisis on Infinite Earths, and the Crisises to follow, this reboot will be no different. Besides, my favorite character is being headlined with Flashpoint. What a great way to reboot the DC Universe. Geoff Johns has been building to this for awhile I suspect. Bring it on!

I'm more concerned about the digital release, but I totally get why DC is doing it. If you want the attention of the kids, be electric. Eventually they will find a paper comic and that will change their world.

Re:Old fans

[Rakarra]

Marvel (and, I suppose, DC) operates in a very strange time continuity, where most of their characters remain the same age regardless of when they were first introduced, with their 'backstory' updated automatically or covered up and not referred to as necessary. So a character who in the mid 80s would have been a 35-year old Vietnam War veteran would today be a 35-year old vet of.. say, the early 90s Gulf War or the Bosnian conflict, or any other conflict appropriate for the time. Characters age only a little, and although they can become veterans of the various teams they're on, they still have aged only a small amount, and their teams only having been in operation for a similar time.

This is informally known as 'Marvel Time' or 'Comic Book Time' since the 80s. TV Tropes has an awesome page on this, but be wary -- TV Tropes can easily suck up all the time from an afternoon.. or a week.

Oh, look...

[Mononoke]

New Coke.

Reboot?

[Yvan256]

Well, it worked for Star Trek, so why not do it for everything else!

...wait, did it work for Star Trek or is the jury still out on this one?

Re:Reboot?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pissed about Star Trek.

Re:Reboot?

[rotide]

We'll see if they make equals and more importantly, a series, that is/are successful and in line with the reboot.

I know Star Trek in general was extremely niche. I know in it's old state, it was dying, hard to admit it, but it wasn't thriving for sure. I'm sad to say the old thought provoking Star Trek might be history and a new Action Adventure replacement is what's on the table now. But I'd rather see them morph it than just let it die. I love the ST universe and I'll love seeing new interpretations on it.

As for the canon of Star Trek, they just made it up as they went. Take Trills for instance. In TNG, they couldn't use the Transporters or it would kill them. In DS9, that was too inconvenient. So they gave them spots and took away their limitations. Whenever inconvenient (or convenient) they would change their own canon!

A reboot in the case of Star Trek was necessary, as the alternative was to let it die =(

Re:Reboot?

[gman003]

Well, the general consensus is "it's better than the last several movies (ie. Nemesis, Insurrection, Generations), but not quite as good as the best movies (II, IV and First Contact).". So, while the reboot is generally seen as an improvement, there's still many ex-fans who are remaining ex-fans.

Judging from that, a DC reboot would work if people are feeling that the current stories aren't as good as they should be. Not being a comics fan myself, I can't say if that's the case.

Re:Reboot?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it worked. So did all the millions who saw it and raved about it.

Rotten Tomatoes: 94%

IMDB: 8.1/10

Re:Reboot?

[Abreu]

It worked.

A lot of us who never were Star Trek fans in the first place saw it and liked it.

I'll certainly watch the sequel coming out in 2012

Re:Reboot?

[Quiet_Desperation]

I have mixed feelings on the ST reboot, but I have to admit destroying Vulcan was pretty ballsy, and Quinto was a good Spock.

A fun thing to do would be, if they know they are doing the final film of the new canon, have them stop the villain of the first film from going back in time, and the last scene is a clip from ST-TOS, the original time line having reasserted itself. :)

Re:Reboot?

[drinkypoo]

I AM a Trek fan, I own more than half of all of it which puts me somewhere below the latex ears group but well into dork territory among the mundanes, and I liked the reboot but I'm not committing until I get more.

Time travel and continuity have often been a big part of Trek... a little more shouldn't hurt anybody.

Re:Reboot?

[zoney_ie]

I found it an enjoyable action movie, but I did watch it thinking, "this isn't Star Trek". Now the original series has a brashness that later Star Trek didn't have, but nevertheless, this was only to the forefront for particular scenes in most episodes, not the whole show.

Also while fun and amusing, there was something almost "Galaxy Quest"-like about the parodies, sorry, portrayals of the "rebooted" characters.

It was a very genuine 21st century movie, for good or bad. Look back a decade or two later and it could be very dated, a lot of "contemporary" visual styles and acting and so on. Mind you, maybe we're going to be subjected to this kind of thing for some time to come? It's entertainment, but there's a certain superficiality and brainlessness to it, and almost a sort of "adults as teenagers" thing going on.

But I guess when even the BBC are reporting on a major e-coli health threat in Europe as a "cucumber crisis", there's not much hope for the future.

Re:Reboot?

[operagost]

Not for my sake, but try one of these next time: ************ SPOILER *************

Re:Reboot?

[LandDolphin]

Better, yet. cut to a scene of Bob Newhart waking up.

Re:Reboot?

[drinkypoo]

Trek has always been dated. There's no question whether the original was. The movies all have been in one way or another, either by their cinematography or their setting as they travel through time or visit a virtual environment. TNG certainly was. In fact I'd argue that either Enterprise or Deep Space Nine is the least dated Trek.

You're right about the characters being parodies of their original selves, but then, the original characters were fairly exaggerated. It's hard to even approximate filling their shoes.

Re:Reboot?

[osu-neko]

As for the canon of Star Trek, they just made it up as they went. Take Trills for instance. In TNG, they couldn't use the Transporters or it would kill them. In DS9, that was too inconvenient. So they gave them spots and took away their limitations. Whenever inconvenient (or convenient) they would change their own canon!

Indeed. Often your first idea for something is not the best. Being constrained to it is a great way to make sure your story never rises to the level it could have. If you have a better idea, change the premise to match. Certain fans will nerd-rage about retcons, and how they're an example of "lousy writing" -- well, yes, it would have been wonderful if we'd thought of all that in advance and didn't have to retcon it, but it's better to retcon it in than go without. A perfect god-author would never have to do it. Humans, on the other hand, make better authors when they're not afraid to do it, albeit better still when their need to do it is less frequent. But no one has perfect foresight, particular not in an ongoing series without a predetermined end-point.

Re:Reboot?

[cyclomedia]

Saw Quinto in season 2 (3?) of 24 and said, "That guy is the next spock!!!!". .. I have to point this out to people every so often because I failed to bet large wads of cash on it and need to make myself feel better.

Re:Reboot?

[Quiet_Desperation]

Seriously? Here? If you say so.

IN B4 NERD RAEG

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, can we mod DC "troll"? 'Cause this is going to produce a shitstorm...

Heh, scared me there for a moment...

[VortexCortex]

At first, I thought the headline meant that the US Government was going to launch into thermonuclear world war...

Just a strategy

[LavouraArcaica]

I think they will just reboot everything. It will probably fail - and they already know it. But when fails, all the old fans will look at the old timeline with nostalgy, raising the value of the old storyline. Then they will come back to what works and sells. Selling more, of course.

They are dropping Gail Simone ???

[Anonymous Coward]

Are they nuts ? :-(

I hope the new Birds of Prey isn't some superficial rubbish...

Confusing title

[drb226]

For those of us who don't immediately recognize the reference to comics, after reading the title, we're scratching our heads wondering just how arrogant the US Capitol is.

Re:Confusing title

[blair1q]

Personally, I think the universe could do with a reboot, and if anyone has the power, it's supposed to be them.

It's only arrogant if they insisted on being able to do it from their iPhones.

Re:Confusing title

[drb226]

New iPhone app idea: Obama's internet^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H universe kill switch. Sell it for $0.99 a pop and make a fortune for yourself and for Apple.

Re:Confusing title

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you should stop acting like the US is the center of the universe and realize that "DC" by itself is meaningless, like "United States".

Re:Confusing title

[EnsilZah]

Actually I was thinking it was some sort of universe-implodnig bomb set-up-us by Mecha Edison as a last ditch attempt at averting his defeat by Zombie Tesla.

Re:Confusing title

[drb226]

Looks like it was universal enough for you to understand, troll. >.>

Again?

[asdf7890]

Again?!

The Fox guarding the Henhouse

[DesScorp]

The people in charge of this reboot... Dan Didio, Jim Lee, Geoff Johns... are some of the prime people responsible for screwing DC up over the past decade. So now they're going to hand the repair job to the same people that helped muck up the works? Sometimes I think Warner Brothers wants to kill DC off.

And some of the costume redesigns... radically changing Superman's outfight without the red tights and adding a military style collar? His costume has only been popular for 70 years, but hey, what does everyone else know.

Here's my first prediction for the "new" DC universe.... the reboot won't stop DC's habit of pushing a major "event" series every year, with so many tie-ins that you can't keep up (or afford to buy all the $3-plus issues). And the marketing for it will be the same crap we've heard ever since Crisis On Infinite Earths... "THIS is the event that changes EVERYTHING"... until the next event, that is.

Maybe now is a great time to quit collecting and just walk away.

Re:The Fox guarding the Henhouse

[Anonymous Coward]

Walking away is what I did in the mid-90's and never really regretted it.

Re:The Fox guarding the Henhouse

[blair1q]

Give it another 10 years, and you'll be coming back, carrying all those dusty boxes of stuff that's appreciatd 100-1000%.

Re:The Fox guarding the Henhouse

[Gramie2]

That would be nice. I have boxes of stuff from the '80s that, for the most part, haven't appreciated at all. Then again, I bought comics that I thought I would enjoy, not for their resale value.

Re:The Fox guarding the Henhouse

[Eponymous Hero]

don't tell me you're taking aim at Jim Lee because he worked on DC vs Mortal Kombat. if so...seriously, be a man. if in fact you are male.

Re:The Fox guarding the Henhouse

[Anonymous Coward]

The word you're looking for is "depreciated". No comic published since the Nixon Administration has gone up in value for more than a few years. Too many collectors keeping them in near-mint shape.

But yes, most of the fans who rage the loudest about this travesty of continuity will be back, because if the last couple decades of increasingly grim superhero stories about rapist supervillains and impotent dead-cat-swinging heroes haven't stopped them from their OCD collection habits, a mere reboot of the DCU won't do it.

Re:The Fox guarding the Henhouse

[Kelson]

Even Superman's costume hasn't been static for the last 70 years. The overall look has been the same, but how the cape attaches, the design of the S-shield, and yes, even those red shorts, have changed a lot over time.

Check out some early Action Comics covers for comparison. http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/action-comics

Re:The Fox guarding the Henhouse

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this is the right way of looking at things. I quit collecting a few years ago after Identity Crisis, Final Crisis, 52, Countdown, etc. It just got to be too much. I now only read trades. And, increasingly, I only read trades that are non-Marvel or DC. I read some Marvel trades, but both companies have continuity messes and an unwillingness just to kill off characters and move on. That makes new series more appealing.

Re:The Fox guarding the Henhouse

[Rakarra]

That would be nice. I have boxes of stuff from the '80s that, for the most part, haven't appreciated at all.

Wait.. did you actually read them? That was the mistake I made.
When I was 7 I didn't appreciate the value of "mint condition."

Ignoring the real impact.

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone is looking at this and missing the real story. Yesterday's article had the following statement, which will have much greater impact on the industry.

      "The publication of JUSTICE LEAGUE #1 will also launch digital day-and-date for all ongoing superhero comic book titles - an industry first."

Digital download, available the same day as the paper copies. Why buy a hard copy when you can read it on your PC /.phone/ tablet / whatever?

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=32563

Re:Ignoring the real impact.

[blair1q]

Uh-huh.

2032 comic-store guy: Anyone want to buy a mint copy of Justice Leage #1?

2032 sentient robot: In digital?

2032 comic-store guy: For you, sure.

2032 comic-store sentient robot: Okay. 0.05% of original list price.

2032 comic-store guy: C'mon, yer bustin' my balls here. 0.1%. Take it or leave it.

Re:Ignoring the real impact.

[tverbeek]

Imagine: entertainment fiction will be purchased for its entertainment value, not its (fictional) collectibility.

Re:Ignoring the real impact.

[Anonymous Coward]

I any copies of it last beyond ~2040 I'll be quite surprised.

Re:Ignoring the real impact.

[blair1q]

Purchased?

2032 comic book dispenser: Please insert your nano-USB brain-jack in the receptacle to receive your free download of Thor #3337 and 14 minutes of University of California Football Presented by Coca-Cola Genetic Tonic prerequisite presentations.

2032 comic book user: Free?

Re:Ignoring the real impact.

[aztektum]

Check out the prices on Comixology. $2.50-$2.99

For a digital comic book

No thanks.

Re:Ignoring the real impact.

[mad.frog]

My 20-year-old dead-tree comics are still readable. (And yes, I still re-read the good ones.)

Will the same be true of the digital versions? Magic 8-Ball says, "Signs point to No".

Re:Ignoring the real impact.

[loufoque]

Because reading a digital copy sucks compared to the real thing?
It might be ok for books (assuming you have e-ink), but certainly not ok for fullcolor high-resolution comic books. The only good thing you can do with your digital copy is print it with a high-resolution printer, which is probably going to cost you more than buying a real copy directly. Cool be useful if you're abroad though.

Re:Ignoring the real impact.

[chemosh6969]

Why buy a hard copy? It'll be cheaper and it'll always be available, whether or not you're at a computer or you're camping out in the middle of the woods(got to have something to burn, am I right ;) )

Repeat, fail, repeat

[Anonymous Coward]

So like hollywood the comic industry has given up on creativity and decided to redo what it has done before. It will probably then wonder why people aren't going nuts trying to give them money.

Geoff Johns' fault

[Anonymous Coward]

This smacks of Geoff Johns' and Dan Didio's push to increase profits by making more NEW! titles to buy while giving the middle finger to longtime fans. I just recently starting reading comics again after twenty years, and found some DC titles I really like, many of which will be cancelled because they aren't profitable enough for the DC corporate overlords (Doom Patrol already was). I'm skipping the whole summer Flashpoint crossover since that too is also a retcon of characters. I'm not big Marvel fan, but at the least the Fear Itself saga is a new story, not another multiverse crossover rehash. Johns and Didio are ruining DC.

Comic book nerds need to reboot.

[Anonymous Coward]

Take a shower,
Go outside
Lose weight
Uninstall Linux
Get laid
Get a Job
Move out of mom's basement
Stop reading comics.

Re:Comic book nerds need to reboot.

[Abreu]

1- check
2- check
3- in process
4- Never!
5- Regularly, for the last 12 years.
6- check
7- check
8- sorta, I only buy compilations, graphic novels and manga ...

I know, I know, don't feed the troll and all that...

Re:Flame Bait

[XiY47]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse_(Marvel_Comics)

not just a reboot, also a new distribution model

[tverbeek]

Another part of this announcement, which is probably more significant than the reboot itself, is that DC will be releasing these new comics simultaneously, both at bricks-and-longbox retailers, but also on apps for the iPad, Android, etc. That is where DC is hoping to gain new readers for this rebooted universe, by finally reaching the younger crowd where they live (rather than expecting them to find the local equivalent of the Android's Dungeon), and maybe bringing back some of the many older geeks who've drifted away but find the idea of a new-and-different DCU interesting enough to take a look.

I don't know if this will work for DC (unlike the Comic Book Guy types out there, I'm not going to prejudge the books before they've been published), and trying to survive in this Brave New World of digital publishing while competing with cooler-looking video games and movies is going to be an up-hill battle. But I think it's a smart move to make, because the alternative was the eventual heat-death of the DC Universe as aging fans of dead-tree pamphlets about characters with decades of continuity dragging along behind them, slowly faded away.

Validation

[shawnmchorse]

This just validates my long held view that DC never publishes much of anything worth reading in the first place.

AV Club discussion

[thirty-seven]

This was up on the AV Club yesterday. I mention this because an interesting (and often humourous) discussion occurred there that many here may be interested in reading.

Re:AV Club discussion

[elrous0]

Yeah, but those Onion guys all have cancerAIDS.

Specify.

[Anonymous Coward]

In that order?

Am I really supposed to care?

[rpresser]

Because I don't. I've been trying for ten minutes to care and I just can't.

Re:Am I really supposed to care?

[blair1q]

So now you know how people feel about the current DC lineup and why they're doing this.

Re:Am I really supposed to care?

[rpresser]

See, I feel that way about the current DC lineup, the new DC lineup, the DC lineup from 20 years ago, the DC lineup that will be 20 years from now, Marvel's lineup, Darkhorse, Mangas ..... IT'S ALL FUCKING BORING AS HELL.

If I want a story, I'll read a book or watch a movie. I can't make myself care about a story crammed into tiny speech bubbles and narrator boxes.

Re:Am I really supposed to care?

[AdamWeeden]

If I want a story, I'll read a book or watch a movie. I can't make myself care about a story crammed into tiny speech bubbles and narrator boxes.

Completely agree. I have given comics a shot numerous times, especially with what is considered by many to be the best of the best: Sandman and Watchmen. Don't get me wrong, it's not that they were horrible; I just think they could have been done so much better (in terms of story) in a true novel form. Since I like the art as well, just throw in some images every few pages, and voila, best of both worlds IMHO. This is not to say that anyone who likes comics is stupid. My tastes are not your tastes. To each their own.

Re:Am I really supposed to care?

[blair1q]

Try the paper version of Watchmen.

The story's pretty close to the movie, but there's visual and verbal structure in the book that you couldn't do in a movie without making it an "Art Film" that nobody'd ever watch twice or recommend once.

And you can still do more in a comic book than you can in a movie. And you can engage visual systems that a novel can't. The fact that 99% of funnybooks don't bother, choosing instead to stick to bombast in their plotlines, doesn't really change that, since 99% of books and movies leave their artistic merit in the diaper pail, too.

Yawn

[albionexile]

Crisis on Infinite Earths #15?

An Historic?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is Bob Wayne in the U.S.? If so, it's "a historic". We actually pronounce the "h" over here.

Re:An Historic?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is Bob Wayne in the U.S.? If so, it's "a historic". We actually pronounce the "h" over here.

"An historic" is annoying, sure, but most normal people here would pronounce it with the "h"- it's only annoying BBC presenters and tossers who want to give themselves gravitas who do otherwise.

At any rate, this criticism over h-dropping is a bit rich coming from someone whose countrymen still can't f*****g pronounce "herbs". I know you all love the French so much that you retained their pronounciation, but it really does sound pretentious and jarringly silling when some yank talks about "erbs". Barf! :-6

Whoa, in year not mod(2)

[RichMan]

It's comics. They do reboots all the time.

Also nobody ever really dies.

they don't need to reboot, they need to end it

[tortovroddle]

That's the difference between manga and comics. Mangas, in general, have an ending, so you can write a coeherent and complex story wihout the necessity of adding tons of new characters to keep it running, kill and ressurect the protagonist 15 times, create tens of multiverses or reboot everything at each 10-15 years because everything is so full os contradictions. No only manga, but series like Sandman, Watchmen (and even Calin & Hobbes), have endings too. They only need to reboot because they don't know when to stop.

Re:they don't need to reboot, they need to end it

[sexconker]

That's the difference between manga and comics. Mangas, in general, have an ending, so you can write a coeherent and complex story wihout the necessity of adding tons of new characters to keep it running, kill and ressurect the protagonist 15 times, create tens of multiverses or reboot everything at each 10-15 years because everything is so full os contradictions. No only manga, but series like Sandman, Watchmen (and even Calin & Hobbes), have endings too. They only need to reboot because they don't know when to stop.

Uh, no.
Many mangas are ridiculously convoluted, run on way to long, have the typical problems of endless new characters, death/resurrection, time warps and retcons, etc, and spawn endless derivative works, alternate versions (both official and unofficial), sequel, prequels, and sidequels.

Mangas can and usually do have all the problems American comics do. They often have these problems to a much worse degree.
The problem is that the story is never fully written. The story is made up as they go along (sometimes with a basic framework, usually not), and it stretched to fit however many issues they think they can sell. This is why TV shows get worse in later seasons. This is why movie sequels usually suck. The basic form of storytelling is at odds with the basic desire to milk a teat until it's dry.

Re:they don't need to reboot, they need to end it

[MMC Monster]

If you like long storylines that actually do have an ending and are (typically) plotted out from beginning to end, go read the Vertigo trade paperbacks. Almost all of them end at either 75 or 100 issues.

100 Bullets
Books of Magic (the 75 issue series)
Sandman
Fables (you can stop at issue 75 and have closure)
etc.

Re:they don't need to reboot, they need to end it

[Unkyjar]

You know, for all the reading of this thread, I never once thought that DC would be rebooting their Vertigo line, and for a moment there you made me worry about that. Shame on you. (Good recommendations btw)

Re:they don't need to reboot, they need to end it

[anyGould]

Don't forget Transmetropolitan (ran 60 issues and done), Scott Pilgrim (6 volumes and done), Wanted (5 or 6 issues, and *far* superior to the movie), Preacher (can't remember the issue count there). I'll mention Promethia (32 issues) since it's self-contained, but that series is *really* weird.

There's gobs of good comics out there that tell a story and then let it be. They just don't have "Super", "Bat", or "Hero" on the cover.

Ugh

[jollyreaper]

Despite being a geek, I've never really followed comic books. Mainly it's been because of cheesedick writing. It's the worst of television (too many hands) mixed with the worst of desperate fan-service for dollars.

Marvel spawned a whole new universe for new readers, Ultimate something or other. That's running in parallel with their existing titles. I have no idea how successful that was.

The problem of a long-running strip is that the characters are stuck in a time warp even while the world moves on around them. Archie is always going to be in a 1950's America that never really existed even as computers and cell phones are dropped in. (or at least that's how it looks at the checkout line. That Archie is even still published is in and of itself a time warp.)

The sad truth of the matter is most of the comic backstories suck to begin with. Too many writers, too much crap. There's not much worth salvaging. And seriously, how many worthwhile stories are there to tell with a given character? The only way to keep it fresh would be to keep getting new takes. Bring a writer on, have him tell his take, move on to the next guy. We see that happen with retellings of classic stories, why not with classic characters? But the problem is that the publishers aren't telling stories, they're moving product. The core consumer they're targeting wants the same old shit, boring and predictable, just like McDonalds. Roided out muscled dudes, pneumatic-titted heroines, and Frank Miller pseudo-grittiness. Bah.

The only comics I've seen that were any good were limited runs. (limited could mean numbers of years.) But they had a beginning, middle, and end. Something like Sandman was decent. But these lurching, undead, zombie titles that just keep going and going without doing anything new, just the same old boring, dependable shit... Ugh. I've watched too much Star Trek, I don't need to go find something new to be disappointed by.

Re:Ugh

[anyGould]

The problem of a long-running strip is that the characters are stuck in a time warp even while the world moves on around them. Archie is always going to be in a 1950's America that never really existed even as computers and cell phones are dropped in. (or at least that's how it looks at the checkout line. That Archie is even still published is in and of itself a time warp.)

I haven't picked up an Archie in years and years, but my understanding is that they're on a floating timeline, similar to Simpsons. The year is 2011, they're in their senior year, Veronica and Betty fight over Archie. Next year it'll be 2012, they'll *still* be in their senior year, etc, etc.

The theory is that this will keep everything "current" without requiring a change to the actual setting (which, to be frank, would kill the Archie-verse; put them into college and question one becomes: why aren't they just having threesomes?)

Re:DC reboots in my pants

[Anonymous Coward]

Diarrhea Chunks?

All Because

[sexconker]

They have to completely rewrite Superman, since they lost the rights to his original origin story.

Please

[WillyWanker]

Please get Jim Lee to stop redesigning costumes. It's not 1994 anymore. And I'm really sick to death of seeing Wonder Woman drawn as a lesbian cowgirl hooker. Just stop already.

This is going to be a mess of epic proportions.

Re:Please

[drinkypoo]

And I'm really sick to death of seeing Wonder Woman drawn as a lesbian cowgirl hooker. Just stop already.

STFU PLS KTHX BYE

Incidentally, as a lark I tried a google image search for "Wonder woman lesbian cowgirl hooker" and the results are intriguing. Just keep scrolling for WTFpiphany.

Re:Please

[WillyWanker]

Sorry, I didn't mean to insult admirers of lesbian cowgirl hookers.

Re:Please

[will_die]

those are some really scary pictures.

Re:Please

[proverbialcow]

Is that her new backstory? A friend...of my science project...wants to know.

....and what now ?

[martiniturbide]

...and now Superman will not use its underwear from the outside. ...marvel's Fantastic Four and Spiderman will be the new enemies of the justice league. ...Wonder Woman invisible jet will be replaced by a gigantic flying snail since DC don't want more jokes about it.

Smells like...

[GReaToaK_2000]

It doesn't pass the smell test. It's yet another rehash in a long line of part 2's. All of which has nothing to do with furthering anything other than the financial bottom line. Lame.

At least with the title "Space Balls II: The search for more money" they were honest about their intentions.

This is just a huge push to Ca$h in on the popularity of the overly hyped, overly SFX'd movies based on comic books of the past and SUCK in a new crowd of teens.

Lame.

saw this in the newspapers

[Thud457]

In the late 80's "The Phantom" seemed to get into an endless cycle of restarting from his origin story because they couldn't seem to get any traction bringing in new readers. You don't see The Phantom in the funny pages any more.

Re:saw this in the newspapers

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you kidding? The Phantom is around, and just as cool as ever. Certainly beats the heck out of the usual comic page garbage.

Re:saw this in the newspapers

[Captain Splendid]

Tru dat. He just finished rescuing his wife from prison, and his current adventure has him dealing with a snotty young geek who spouts Hackers-like techno-gibberish. Good times!

Yes, the fact that I actually know this should fill me with great shame and sadness. I'm way ahead of you on that.

Hey Rocky! Watch me pull a Comic Book Universe...

[Anonymous Coward]

out of my hat!

Again?

Fabulous!

[wcrowe]

Aquaman finally comes out of the closet!

long ago

[knghtrider]

and this is exactly why I stopped reading/collecting comics long ago. Asimov didn't reboot his universe, he tied it all together rather brilliantly. Heinlein..well, he used a deus ex machina to tie his stories together with all the other pulp universes in existence; not as brilliant, but a good yarn nonetheless.

But," we've got sagging sales what do we do?" " I know....let's 'Reboot the Universe'".. bah..

move along, nothing to see here..

Ran out of spine...

[TiggertheMad]

Its funny that you should mention it, but Disney seems stuck in the same rut of, 'It's easier to recycle, than to invent'. The problem with modern IP is the story never ends, it just keeps going until it is so crappy that it makes no money. You want to see star wars episodes 7-9? GL might not want to make it, but wait for him to die, and somebody will want more Ferraris and blow. It's only a matter of time.

DC should just kill of a couple of major characters and bury them forever to make room for new ones. You cannot plant new trees unless you cut down some old ones. A reboot is just recycling the old crap again.

Re:Ran out of spine...

[SuricouRaven]

"GL might not want to make it, but wait for him to die, and somebody will want more Ferraris and blow."

That's how we got the movies based on the Dr Seuss children's books. The author absolutly refused to let them be made (Apart from the 1966 Grinch movie and a few made-for-TV short movies to promote the books), as a matter of princible - he wrote the books to teach children to read, and to make them into movies would defeat the purpose. There's a reason one of the famous works is nothing but lots of words that rhyme. Then he died in 1991... the rights were inherited by people more susceptable to the wad of cash. Thus we got the new Grinch movie in 2000, Cat in the Hat in 2003, Horton hears a Who in 2008...

Comics as myth

[overshoot]

If you're going to reboot a universe, do it like Doctor Who did it, and not like Star Trek. Respect the decades of canon, and you have a built in fan base. Change the authors, the visual style, whatever, just don't mess with canon.

Canon is the problem. Canon cruft, if you will. For instance, the hopelessly tangled canon behind Barry Allen was the main reason they killed him off in Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Now, admitting that I've been following DC off and on for more than 50 years (yup), my opinion may not be remotely related to marketability but here it is:
Comics are mythology. Mythology has no continuity. The details change from year to year and audience to audience so as to address the cultural needs of the time and place. You can always make up new stories in the mythos. If anything is constant, it's character: Zeus is the perpetual playboy who can't keep it zipped, Hera is the jealous wife who can't do anything about hubby so she takes it out on the tootsies and bastards, Hermes is a trickster, etc.

Were I in charge (and we can all be thankful I'm not), the DC Universe would be much more like the perennial movie versions in that each cycle exists as a snapshot in time. To the extent that there is continuity, it ages rapidly -- the details of anything more than a year old are vague, and anything more than three years old might as well have never happened.

Re:Comics as myth

[metrix007]

Comics are not mythology anymore than any TV show or movie series are. Just stories with good characters does not myth make.

listen up fuckers!

[Thud457]

Your stories don't belong to you, they belong to your fans.
That's where your value comes from. If you don't find people with whom your story resonates, your story doesn't sell.
So stop pissing on your loyal customers by screwing around with what they discern as a good thing, just to pursue those that don't appreciate your oeuvre, Lucas!

Just plain old.

[overshoot]

Green Arrow would be in his 50s or 60s.

Way off. Ollie was doing impossible archery with crazy arrows when I was a kid in the 50s, and he wasn't a kid himself. Figure late 70s, minimum.

Re:Just plain old.

[LWATCDR]

Sorry not a big Green Arrow fan of frankly comics in general. Thanks for the correction I thought he was a 60s creation.

how many different ways...

[Lead Butthead]

How many different spins of the Waynes murder do we need, truly? Seems that DC's imagination is all but dried out.

Re:how many different ways...

[TheRaven64]

In the new one, Thomas Wayne shoots first.

East vs. West

[dazedNconfuzed]

In the Kamigata area, they have a sort of tiered lunchbox
they use for a single day when flower viewing.
Upon returning, they throw them away, trampling them underfoot.
The end is important in all things. - Hagakure (The Way of the Samurai)

Re:not just a reboot, also a new distribution mode

[rAiNsT0rm]

I'm now 31, I used to be heavily into comics then took a long hiatus... just in the past month or two I've fell hard for a number of titles again. But, I was never into the superheroes and tights type stuff, I liked the grittier and more artistic books. Templesmith, McFarlane, Ashley Wood, etc. I also rarely read ongoing series in favor of smaller mini-series and TPBs.

The DC reboot is cool, and it may entice me to pick up a few titles I would have otherwise passed but often reboots fail. They try to start anew but toss in too many inside bits and bobs for the long-time reader too. That puts me off. I think comics in general should stick to say 12 issues per story arc. Then they wouldn't alienate people that don't want to jump in at issue #345 or try to find/read all the missed ones. (that's me). I think it would lead to tighter storytelling and keep things fresher. That's just my opinion on it. They could still have a handful of ongoings for those fans too if they wanted.

Re:not just a reboot, also a new distribution mode

[Captain Splendid]

Holy crap, McFarlane's drawing again? That's actually a bigger scoop than this DC non-story (seriously, this is at least the third "reboot" in as many decades).

No one will notice.

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

It's DC comics. No one cares. :)

Re:not just a reboot, also a new distribution mode

[mwvdlee]

The reason they don't do short stories is the same reason soaps keep dragging on forever; a certain group of people get addicted to the storyline and will keep following it to an ever closer finale which never quite comes. Short series are easy to pick up, but they're also easy to drop.

Re:Flame Bait

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoosh.

Re:not just a reboot, also a new distribution mode

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Reboot?

'Cos the DC's are not nearly as "Movie Friendly" as the Marvels - I'm guessing...

Except PowerGirl, of course.

Nikola Tesla

[guttentag]

DC Reboots Universe

And Nikola Tesla is spinning in his grave, mumbling "I told you this would happen. I warned you! I said to stick to AC because DC would bring about the end of the universe!"

Re:Reboot? - Star Trek?

[Anonymous Coward]

> ...wait, did it work for Star Trek or is the jury still out on this one?

A lot of people saw the new Star Trek movie but I doubt anyone would call themselves a Trekkie because of it (I'm an old-school Trekkie from the 70s and I still hew to the original series -- and Deep Space 9).

Neverending story.

[MaWeiTao]

The problem with the American comic book industry is that it's stuck in the persistent now. That means that history irrelevant. We've got these characters and stories that span decades but no one ever ages. The world changes around them to fit with the times and we're expected to accept that everything just happens in the present. The industry, like American entertainment in general, is afraid to let go. They desperately cling to the same never-ending stories because if they let go they're then forced to come up with something new.

Japanese manga produces and endless amount of crap, but this one area in which they're far superior to American comics. Japanese comics routinely feature a finite storyline. There's a definite beginning and end. Some have a tendency to stretch out a particular storyline to an absurd length, but at least there's the satisfaction that there will eventually be a true conclusion and that major characters could actually die.

However, I wonder if readers are still obsessed with certain characters like I remember growing up. Whenever a character did die it would spark outrage amongst fans. Evidently American readers have as much trouble letting go as do the writers.

So this who DC reboot strikes me as lame. It leaves me with this extremely unsatisfying sense that there will never be any resolution. But then I've stopped reading this sort of thing long go. The superhero archetype has gotten a bit too quaint for my taste. They haven't even done anything to modernize the costumes, instead continuing to stick with tights that looks like they've been painted on. I've always wondered if they go with this look because it's easier than drawing clothing and other accoutrements. I don't have an inherent problem with them theme, but they keep perpetuating tired old ideas. How many superheroes do we need?

Re:Neverending story.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure but manga also has its: Inuyasha, Naruto, One Piece and Bleach. These Neverending stories work because they are set in an fantasy setting. There is no need to explain why the story isn't keeping up with actual chronology. No Obama Bleach crossovers. No odd leaps in tech.

Re:Neverending story.

[anyGould]

Japanese comics routinely feature a finite storyline. There's a definite beginning and end. Some have a tendency to stretch out a particular storyline to an absurd length, but at least there's the satisfaction that there will eventually be a true conclusion and that major characters could actually die.

Non-comic comparison of "how to do this right" - Coronation Street. Longest running television show in freakin' history, and it'll likely never end. But whatever happens this week, happens. And you can trace continuity all the way back.

Could you imagine Coronation (or for the US-centric, any soap opera) doing a "reboot"? I've always wanted to see senior citizens rioting.

Re:not just a reboot, also a new distribution mode

[Captain Spam]

Reboot?

'Cos the DC's are not nearly as "Movie Friendly" as the Marvels - I'm guessing...

Except PowerGirl, of course.

She's probably the LEAST "movie friendly" they have. I mean, there's certain laws of physics and human anatomy that would make casting extraordinarily difficult...

reboot codename:

[Tumbleweed]

DC Itanium

Re:not just a reboot, also a new distribution mode

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Like the Matrix - "Bullet Time"

I think they could use ZZ Top: "Pearl Necklace" as the soundtrack.

Didn't this already happen?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't this supposed to happen in May 21, 2011? And will they discontinue it on Oct. 21, 2011?

Crisis on Infinite Earths not effective enough?

[Trixter]

I thought the Crisis on Infinite Earths series in the 1980s was supposed to solve all this crap. I guess we need a "Crisis on Crisis on Infinite Earths" now?

Re:Crisis on Infinite Earths not effective enough?

[lennier]

I thought the Crisis on Infinite Earths series in the 1980s was supposed to solve all this crap. I guess we need a "Crisis on Crisis on Infinite Earths" now?

We just had an Infinite Crisis and then a Final Crisis. I guess this one is the Final Infinite Final Crisis of Infinite Destiny.

Re:not just a reboot, also a new distribution mode

[tverbeek]

Comics sold a lot better (millions not tens of thousands) when they were impulse items and you could buy just one of them at random (effectively picking up a series and dropping it at will), than they do now.

There's no place like the Home page

[tepples]

Enzo: How do we beat the user?

Chester: This is one of those new "social" games. The object is to keep the user looking at ads. So you win when the user wins.

Dot: So how do we end the game and get out of here?

Chester: Click your heels together three times, repeat "There's no place like home" to quick-travel back to your home base, and then come back tomorrow with a bucket and click the cow again. This is how you "farm".

(In original ReBoot, games are played in a container called a GameCube. In 2006, Nintendo replaced the GameCube with the Wii, whose controller has a "home" button for returning to Wii Menu.)

Post-Post-Post Crisis

[seandiggity]

These "back to basics but we're changing everything" reboots are really starting to grind on me...cycles of reboots every few years, and DC tends to do them in the worst way. Marvel leans more toward limited ones like the terrible "Heroes Reborn" or the awesome "Age of Apocalypse"...they seem to be wise enough to test out the reboots on a few titles rather than the whole Marvel Universe at once, and then merge the successful characters/storylines back into Earth-616. DC, on the other hand, will probably be doing "Zero Hour Crisis in Hypertime during Blackest Night in the Multiverse" in 2015.

Re:Post-Post-Post Crisis

[Anonymous Coward]

"Zero Hour Crisis in Hypertime during Blackest Night in the Multiverse" in 2015.

... with the 52 weeks of DEATH IN THE FAMILY during the EMERALD DAWN... All to SPAWN a new group of YOUNGBLOODS in their IMAGE. If you aren't VALIANT enough, ULTIMATEly, you'll end up with VERTIGO.

It's happened before, and it will happen again.

So say we all.

Re:not just a reboot, also a new distribution mode

[arisvega]

McFarlane was pencils for ('The amazing', I think) Spiderman about a decade or so ago. And The Incredible Hulk, if I recall? Man he was good. So was Byrne.

This would've worked 20 years ago

[GodfatherofSoul]

When there were plenty of young readers who only stayed in the game for 5-10 years or so. When I collected, Jean Grey had already died and come back (in various incarnations) 3 times. But, that didn't affect my enjoyment because it was a distant historical context. Now, with a larger percentage of the market being collectors and not the casual read-discard crowd, the past history is cemented in the minds of the readers who've probably been in the game for much longer.

DC Ultimate

[Cable]

Marvel tried this with the Marvel Ultimate Universe. No doubt this is Universe/Earth 53 or something and then we go back to the normal universe.

All it takes apparently is a hissy fit by Superboy Prime to hit the wall in the space-time continuum, really easy to do apparently. :)

90's revival

[Anonymous Coward]

Universe reboot? Jim Lee, Scott Lobdell, Fabian Nicieza? What's next? Rob Liefeld?

This sounds more of a 90' revival than a resounding, unforgettable reboot as Crisis were.

Ugh...

It will take less than a year.....

[Anonymous Coward]

In a year or less DC will do one of the following..........

1) Do a event that will dissolve all this new canon and set everything back to the way it is now. Grant morrison will write it and it will probablly end up batman journeying the beginging of time where he finds a giant celestial loom that creates all fabric of being in which batman will sing a song into it and make a wish, then he will wake up and find the entire dc universe as it is right now, and everything was a psychic dream he picked up from a starborn child that died a million years ago and its last thoughts traveled through time and hit batman. Or superman will find the physical manisfitation of time itself and punch it so hard it sends everything back to the past, which would be right now. Either of those will of course take place on the last page of a 9 part storyline all of the sudden and quickly be followed by "The End".

2) They will suddenly start numbering titles from where they are now and pretend like this reboot never happened. And when questioned about it they will just say "Reboot? Pffff I dont know what your talking about. Youve been reading to many marvel comics."

or

3) This will just be a alternate earth so they have a excuse to have like 5 superman, 13 batman, 3 wonder woman, 4 green lantern comics on the shelf each week.

Re:Flame Bait

[teh_commodore]

There's the Marvel Universe, and the Ultimate Universe, and they are COMPLETELY separate. There's a well-known super-hero that is very recently dead in one and totally alive in the other.

More than "Infinite Earths"!

[Tetsujin]

A lot of people thought they couldn't do greater than "Infinite Earths" - I mean, it's Infinite. You can't have more Earths than Infinite Earths, right? But, as it turns out, the Infinite Earths were countably infinite. This is why they were able to define a mapping of their Infinite Earths onto the natural number set (Earth One, Earth Two, Earth Three, etc.).

But this time around, the number of Earths is Uncountably Infinite. Not only can we get Earths infinitely different from our own, we can also get infinitely subtle variations. We can take two Earths with differences so minor as to be nearly indistinguishable, and find a third that is somewhere between the two. So even though the original Infinite Earths were, in fact, Infinite, there are still more of them in the new Uncountably Infinite Earths.

Re:More than "Infinite Earths"!

[metrix007]

Just because they assign number labels to earths they find does not mean there are not infinite earths, or even that they are countably infinite...

Re:More than "Infinite Earths"!

[Tetsujin]

I never said the number of Earths in the set of Infinite Earths was not infinite.
Admittedly I'm going out on a limb by saying they're countably infinite but that's just for the sake of making a joke.

Re:not just a reboot, also a new distribution mode

[Anonymous Coward]

More than two decades now. We're getting old.

You do care.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you didn't care, you wouldn't be working so hard to convince strangers that you don't care.

Re:not just a reboot, also a new distribution mode

[Anonymous Coward]

Denise Milani as a blonde

To Reboot DC Universe

[cybergremlin]

Press Ctrl-Alt-Kryptonite

this just in

[Anonymous Coward]

DC doesn't understand why doing the exact same thing year after year after year does nothing but shrink their audience and perpetually alienate potential new customers. Their business is going down the toilet and the best idea they can come up with is to go back to the beginning and re-do EXACTLY what led them to their current situation.

DAR WHY DOES MY FOOT HURT EVERY TIME I SHOOT IT?

This is how bad it is.

[Roachie]

They have to resort to killing the DC heritage just for the short term pop as the result of publishing a bunch of #1s. But hey, it a great investment. My Nomad #1 from 1990-whatever has held its value well over the years ;)

Re:not just a reboot, also a new distribution mode

[1u3hr]

os the DC's are not nearly as "Movie Friendly" as the Marvels - I'm guessing...

Yeah, who'd ever go to see a "Batman" or "Superman", or "Green Lantern" movie or TV show? Bunch of losers.

Re:not just a reboot, also a new distribution mode

[tverbeek]

If by "a decade or so ago" you mean "roughly a quarter century ago", that's correct. :)

Somewhat Confirmed By Previews

[DrSlinky]

I went to the shop today to pick up my books, and tell my boss about reading this. Naturally, being a pro-DC, anti-Marvel guy, he didn't believe me at first. I showed him the article, and he was still skeptical.

Luckily, new issue of Previews came out today. And although DC is pushing a few titles twice in August, to complete storylines, there is only ONE issue confirmed for august 31st: Flashpoint # 5.

Interpret as you like, but that looks like confirmation to me.

Re:not just a reboot, also a new distribution mode

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't purchased any in a long time myself, but I used to grab a fair number. It was in part enjoyment and I wanted to fund my local establishment. I had many good times at the comic/game shop simply because they would host any game event. Some of the staff were friendly and others viewed everyone as an annoyance. Part of the joy in actually collecting the comics was because I would drop a huge box of comic books on my nephews.

The reboot will probably get me back at least in digital form. I'm too far away to really worry about giving away my comics now and said distance has left me with no nostalgia to drive the previous collection. Still, it's only a few dollars and I tend to enjoy a few of the arcs. I just hope they don't spoil some of the lines to fuel movies/cartoons. A richer and darker story line was the actual driving force behind why the comics were always better.

Star Wars sequel trilogy

[KingAlanI]

Star Wars sequel trilogy? I could see that working, especially if they adapt some fo the better Expanded Universe material; I'm partial to Timothy Zahn's Admiral Thrawn books myself.

Doctor Who wasn't rebooted

[Anonymous Coward]

When the show came back in 2005, it was significantly different in tone and production values... but it wasn't a reboot. Christopher Eccleston played the 9th incarnation of the Doctor, not the 1st. The old series is still very much part of the canon, and there have been numerous references to it.

What about the ARTWORK?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Most, if not all of these comments are just about the stories in comicbooks and how they simply rehash the same them. MOST people miss the point of comic books. It's about the art too ya know? Sure the story is important, but if the art is crap then no one will even bother to read it. Comicbook art has come a looooong way and it's usually the reason I will actually buy a comic these days.

Know what would be better than a reboot?

[Anonymous Coward]

NEW CHARACTERS.

You can slap new stories on 1940's characters all you want, but they're still 1940's characters. I realize that superheroes are recycled archetypes that go back for centuries, but can we at least try for some fresh _names_ for once?

They still make those?

[Animats]

There are still comic books? Actual paper comic books?

This has happened before, why take notice now?

[Tomsk70]

Remember when DC/ Marvel made characters like Hulk and Batman the centre of the action again? I'm talking post-Dark Knight Returns.

Suddenly, all the stories were much more believable because you had fantastical characters in a semi-realistic world (or trapped in their own heads, like Hulk), Over time, however, other characters started to creep in until every issue seemed to involve 'super-team of the day', probably where DC/ Marvel thought it might sell more (whilst cheapening the main character). I don't see any sign of this stopping, and yet another reboot to get themselves out of the cul-de-sac plotlines they've written themselves into (Is Batman dead? Is he not? Is he? Do we really believe Bruce Wayne won't return? Of course not) is a bit of a gamble, because we've been here before.

You don't *have* to age characters. You don't *have* to kill them off. Just because Dark Knight got away with ageing Bruce Wayne, that shouldn't be the bar that all the others have to raise their game to.

Lazy cowards the lot of them

[Anonymous Coward]

It was this shit that put me off comics in the first place. Crossovers, parallel universes, what-ifs, reboots. Grow a pair and let the poor old bastards die. Then we might get some new stories. "Batman is the new Garfield": discuss.