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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."
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.
I read the internet for the articles.
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.
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.
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.