DC Comics announced they would be rebooting their entire catalogue. All of it. Slavishly. Reboots, of course, are terrible things. No one is ever !00% satisfied, because it means every story developed over the last seventy years of writing gets thrown out. DC, of course, is no stranger to the reboot. Every one of the Infinite Crisises has been a framework for their reboots, but they’ve never taken it this far before, and for so little. There isn’t much rhyme or reason for resetting their series again except to drive up sales. Some of their titles, like Wonder Woman, are coming off of a hard reboot that failed miserably. DC tries to justify their position by saying that it’s a good starting point for new readers to get into their titles by starting over each series fresh. It’s not a philosophy that works. A series is basically driven by it’s writer, and those writers come and go according to their contracts. That’s how you end up with characters dying at the climax of a big series, only be brought back to life magically when the next writer takes the reins. Even by starting fresh, you’ll soon find yourself bogged down by references to comics that may have been release forty years ago. Spider-Man comics is lousy with this kind of backlogging. Series like the Clone Saga were created to basically reset the character and pave over everything that happened beforehand, but then it would keep skipping back. It was a 90’s series that referenced a separate obscure series that took place in the 80’s. Now here in 2010-2011, Spider-Man’s been rebooted again with One More Day, wherein his marriage to Mary Jane never happened, and over twenty years of cannon were erased. You can already see that plot-line beginning to retract to the old status, though, with issues trying to explain what happened by re-referencing 80’s comics.
Reboots always try to do two things: They try to be gritty, and they try to be X-treme, with as many X’s as they can get in there. That’s how this:
Can turn into this:
They also renumber all their volumes back to issue #1, because they sell more copies that way. Casual collectors think their #1 issues will be worth more in the long run, but statistically, it doesn’t work out that way. First appearances: yes. First issues: not necessarily. X-Men Issue #1 Vol #1 sold a bajillion copies, and hence the comic is worthless. They were giving them away free at Pizza Hut, for God’s sake. How does a jr. man of steel get a tattoo? Is it painted on? That’s X-treme!
The question is: do comics need reboots? Comic book movies do, because actors and directors and studios can change drastically. Also: some movies are terrible. A lot, really. As I mentioned, the creative teams for comic books changes quite frequently. Bob Kane, for instance, no longer writes Batman, because he is very dead. “Team” comics, like Justice League and Teen Titans can be rebooted just by changing the cast of characters. Titles like Superman, however, have very well established stories. Everyone knows Superman’s origin, and there’s no point in rehashing it. No matter how off-base Superman gets (think of Smallville) his origin is the same. As for Batman:
This is all you need to know. Still: it crops up in every single issue of Batman, and there’s close to a thousand now.
Does DC need a reboot? Sales are slumping, and they need to go digital to keep up. The reboot ties in with their big digital push. Of course, I have read literally thousands of comics illegally, so offering comics as digital doesn’t really recoup the losses: it just means someone won’t have to scan their comic collection every Wednesday.
Do the comics themselves need a reboot? A lot of issues are enjoying a high-water mark, like Supergirl, while Superman (oddly enough) is floundering. Wonder Woman needs a re-reboot. Other titles, like Gotham City Sirens have reached a natural conclusion. It’s also an opportunity to re-introduce dormant titles like Blue Beetle and Justice League International, while starting much deserved new series like Mr.Terrific. Other series, like Batman and Robin and Green Lantern, would be a disaster if affected.
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