A week or so ago it was announced that come Fall, all DC Comics' titles would start over with a new issue number one. Their characters would be revamped, younger, and all have horrible, hackneyed, piece of shit Jim Lee redesigns (I'll get to you later, Jim).
Reboots and Retcons and Renumbering are certainly not a thing of the past in Comicdom. Redesigns and tweaks to costumes aren't, either. But here's my problem with this idea of starting with a clean slate: it brings up too many questions, it almost never sticks, and it pisses off faithful readers like myself.
I know that they want to keep their comics more modern, fresh, new, exciting. But doing away with several decades of continuity is not the way to go about it, and neither is alienating long-time fans. Didn't the folks at DC learn from Marvel's "One More Day/Brand New Day" mistake? Recently, Marvel had Spider-man make a deal with the devil (no, really. And yet it's Grant Morrison who gets all this shit for having Batman lost in time) to have reality altered so his secret identity, which was made public, be a secret again.
What this meant was that thirty-odd years of Spidey being married to Mary Jane were gone. Poof. Kaput. It pissed off a lot of people, myself included. People who had been reading for years were forced to ask, "what have I been reading for? You just told me all these stories basically didn't happen or matter because you (the editors) wanted it changed, on a whim."
Now, I know that comics are all imaginary shit and that none of it really happens. But when reading a story, watching a television show, etc., isn't it a huge cock-slap in the face to have the people in charge of whatever fantasy you follow say "that stuff, there? It didn't happen. We're pretending it was all a dream or something." It's the comic book equivalent of Patrick Duffy getting out of the shower on Dallas to discover it was all a dream. It smacks of contempt for your audience and a lack of talent from your writers: You've written yourself into a hole, so you conveniently undo all the events leading up to it to get yourself out. It's absolute horseshit.
And DC Comics is doing this with an entire universe of history, apparently. So characters new and old get discarded. Actually, looking at the solicitations for the 'new' titles, there's a few glaring (and infuriating) omissions and changes:
-Dick Grayson Is Nightwing Again.
Really? Really? I was praising DC for making Dick Batman in my second post here On the Fringe. I said many positive things, like how Dick was more fun as Bats, how he deserved it, how it was a fitting progression of the character and how it was a very bold move to keep Dick as Gotham's Batman even after Bruce returned from the past. Alas, I figured it wouldn't be permanent, but why now? Why is this a good idea when Grant Morrison hasn't even finished his Batman, Inc. epic? And why in sweet fuck is he wearing Chris O'Donnell's outfit from Batman and Robin?!
-Barbara Gordon Is Batgirl Again.
Why? The Joker shooting and crippling Barbara Gordon in The Killing Joke was one of the only lasting changes ever made in comics. Her second identity as Oracle was a stroke of genius, I thought. She grew up and became a huge part of Bruce Wayne's war on crime, led the Birds of Prey, and even had a tenure on the Justice League. Why demote her? Especially when you have not only Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brown as Batgirl-type characters, but Kate Kane as Batwoman? Fuuuuck!
-Superman Is the First Superhero and the Justice Society of America Is Being 'Given a Rest.'
Superman being written by Grant Morrison, okay. Superman being given a 'new' costume that looks like armor, very bad. He's invulnerable. That means "bullets bounce off him even in his birthday suit." Armor is redundant and just plain idiotic. But once you get over the 'edgy' design aesthetic, you start to wonder: where does this leave the JSA? Well, it's official now: of the fifty-two titles DC has released solicitations for, JSA is not among them in any way, shape, or form. So these characters that have been around since World War Two, that have endured massive changes all in their own right, are going to (at least temporarily) cease to exist. So characters like the Golden Age Flash and Green Lantern, who have been featured prominently only recently on Smallville and Batman: The Brave and the Bold, who are now perhaps a tad familiar with people who don't read comics, i.e. the casual fans and these mythical "new readers" DC purportedly wants to draw in, don't exist? Have you fuckers thought this through at all? Was this truly just a whim on your golden boy Geoff Johns' part?
-Jim Lee Has Redesigned Many, If Not All, of the New Costumes.
Let me break this down for you. Jim Lee was a popular artist in the 90's, who, along with many other artists at the time who worked for the big two, started their own company called Image. It had creator-owned characters conceptualized and drawn by artists; some were very successful, like Todd McFarlane's Spawn, while others, like Lee's WildC.A.T.S. had their peak in the 90's and floundered ever since (going through many retcons and reboots and revamps throughout their history). Even Spawn, probably Image's most successful title, has faded from prevalence since its inception (a terrible movie adaptation probably didn't help).
So what's my point, then? Jim Lee's artwork, while solid and consistent, is dated. VERY DATED. When he left Marvel to co-found Image, he was at the top of his game. He was on the forefront of the "Everybody should draw characters with a Manga/Anime flavor" movement that came in the late 90's and early 2000's. Back then, had he been redesigning costumes and put in a position of power at Marvel or DC, it might have been a very good fit. Oh wait! He was in a position of power at Marvel back then. Remember Heroes Reborn?
Marvel rebooted Captain America and Iron Man with Jim Lee and Rob Liefield. It didn't last very long. I can't say that I've read much of it, but the geek community's consensus at the time (more with Liefield's work than Lee's) was that they wanted the Cap and Stark they knew and loved back. And I think this is where we'll see DC going sooner than later.
When Lee left Marvel, he might have been at the top of his game, but forming a company with fellow creators, being in charge of his own sandbox and getting all the media attention that Image initially garnered probably made him complacent as shit. And that complacency has not let him grow as an artist one single bit. Disagree? Look at some of his work from the start of WildC.A.T.S. now look at the promo pic for the new Justice League. Yeah, there's some progression there, mostly in his proportion and anatomy. But that 'C.A.T.S drawing is at least fifteen years old, by my estimation. His style is certainly more refined, I suppose, but for a guy whose sole job is drawing comics and superheroes, don't you think it looks like the same old shit?
Plus, Jim Lee was the Korn of comic books. Remember when Korn came out and then Nu Metal followed? That half-whiny, half-hard stuff that everybody tried so hard to be while it was popular? It created so many imitators to Korn's style that the originators seemed just as watered-down as the imitators and Korn itself almost got lost in the shuffle. That's exactly what happened with Lee. He was popular, so everyone tried to draw more like him. That era has passed, thankfully, but I fear his imitators may be sharpening their pencils again (some of them, like Brett Booth, already have a job with the relaunch at DC. And Booth's Teen Titans designs are the worst of the bunch).
Conclusion
I won't be following DC's titles as closely as I have these past few years. I was already getting burnt out on giant crossovers (Blackest Night, Final Crisis) and the continuous poor treatment characters like Wally West received in favor of their Silver Age predecessors. But Dick being demoted to Nightwing, Tim Drake possibly having no connection to Batman, and now Power Girl and the Justice Society fading into creative limbo were the final straws for me. The day after these announcements were made, I finished the third volume of Batman and Robin, and as much as I enjoyed it, knowing Dick would no longer wear the cowl soon made me sad. They've successfully built up a lot of mythology that got me back into comics over the last few years, and to discard it completely, let alone cherry-picking what elements they want to keep and what they want to ignore, has soured me on whatever awaits. I've tried to keep an open mind and rationalize that these changes likely won't stick, but anger rules my reasoning. I'll vote with my dollar, DC. I just hope others are doing the same so we can get Geoff Johns, Dan DiDio and Jim Lee the fuck out of the big offices.
-Swift
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