DC reboot

[SuaveStar]

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2012/08/25/judd-winick-walks-off-batwing-leaves-dc-comics-for-now/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BleedingCool+%28Bleeding+Cool+Comic+News+%26+Rumors%29

Judd Winick leaves DC. He also refused to write Green Arrow again. Which is a shame.

[SuaveStar]

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2012/08/26/dc-comics-announce-geoff-johns-and-david-finchs-justice-league-of-america/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BleedingCool+%28Bleeding+Cool+Comic+News+%26+Rumors%29

Geoff Johns and David Finch are the creative team for Justice League of America. This will not be replacing Justice League, but likely replacing International.

[KnightWing]

Okay, that's kinda badass. Martian Manhunter loses out on Justice League membership, gets his own friggin' league. Ha.

[Donomark]

From a non-comics reader's perspective, I humbly offer up the following question:

What's the big deal? If this is a new continuity (and this doesn't involve Batman or GL, who've meant to retain links to their pre-Flashpoint continuities if I've been reading things right), then why can't Superman & Wonder Woman be an item?

I understand that the Supes-Lois dynamic is a big deal, but then they only married in comic continuity to tie in with Lois & Clark. Similarly, in other media, the JLU pushed a relationship of sorts between Diana and Batman. Granted Bats doesn't have a sustained love interest like Supes does, but doesn't Diana traditionally have Steve Trevor? In the DCAU, that relationship is explained within a specific time period and is therefore wrapped up neatly, but the concept of Batman and Wonder Woman wasn't THAT outrageous.

The DCnU got criticised from its inception for not being radically different enough. And now Superman has traded (he says, not knowing if new Supes was even in a relationship with her) Lois Lane in for Wonder Woman, and that's a deal-breaker? I'm not firing off criticisms, I just don't understand what people a) are mad about, b) expected from a universe reboot, however half-arsed it was.

I think I said before on these boards, but for me it's not so much the idea as it is my lack of faith in the execution. It's a logical idea never really fully explored, even when it's been done in stories like Kingdom Come or....DKSA. The current regime though...naw, no I don't think it'll be written very well.

[You Know Who]

Same here, though, I do prefer Wonderbats to Wondersupes, even though the latter was executed well in Kingdom Come and Red Son.

[Molly]

Kingdom Come worked because it was a logical progression of Clark's healing upon his failure to save Lois and basically everyone else he loved from Jack Nicholson.

[KnightWing]

I never liked the Batman/WW pairing, just because it's Batman. Literally, he cannot have a happy relationship while still being Batman. Furthermore, a lot of things about his character are the kind of things that WW despises (constant lying, especially to close friends and family, deception in general, etc).

Honestly, I don't think the DCAU people really understood a single thing about Wonder Woman aside from the literal facts about her (probably since a lot of the show was based on the dynamic from Grant Morrison's JLA, and Morrison has since stated that he never really understood her character back then). She had almost no personality whatsoever aside from being a generic warrior-type character, and her flirtation with Batman seemed like a thing of "hey, she's a strong attractive dark-haired woman; by the laws of Batman lore, they MUST have romantic tension!"

BTW, picked up Justice League #12 today. Good stuff.

[Molly]

Outside of the DCAU, I haaaate Bruce/Diana. Mostly for the reasons you've stated. It would take a fucking merger to do it, but the perfect man for Wonder Woman is Steve Rogers. They're so similar, personality-wise that it's nuts.

[Stavros]

Just saw the lineup for the new JLA book-

Does look good. Plus the 0 issue introducing the new Green Lantern was good, although really just a rehash of a storyline in Power Girl a while back. Are all middle eastern heroes destined to be mistaken for terrorists?

[SuaveStar]

Just saw the lineup for the new JLA book-

Does look good. Plus the 0 issue introducing the new Green Lantern was good, although really just a rehash of a storyline in Power Girl a while back. Are all middle eastern heroes destined to be mistaken for terrorists?

Yeah, Green Lantern 0 was a pretty solid issue, though the ending, was just strange. The terrorist race things didn't happen all at once, they were just specific moments in his life, and if you found a guy driving a van with a bomb in it, you'd probably think he was a terrorist too.

I also read World's Finest 0 and Earth-2 0. Earth-2 was dull, and didn't really make much sense, so I'm dropping the book for something else. World's Finest, was fun, the art by Kevin Maguire was also very nice.

[KnightWing]

Really late to the party, but I just read the first two issues of Earth-2, and I think the correct phrase is "holy shit!" AWESOME stuff.

[Stavros]

Picked up a few of the issue zeros

Deathstroke- Written and drawn by Rob Leifeld. Lasted 3 pages before giving up, I can't live with his art.

Green Lantern Corps- The Origin of Guy Gardner. Pretty damn awesome. No spoilers, but this version of Guy is fundamentally the same as ever, even with these tweaks.

Superboy- An example of an origin that's so recent it doesn't need the insane update they're throwing at it. It doesn't even tie in with the Young Justice one. Probably won't revisit.

Batgirl- Odd combo of new and old continuity, but it was well written and coherent with the rest of the current Bat-books. I'd like to get into a Babs book, might go get the rest of the issues from this series.

Batman- Cool retake on Year One, but Year One sorta doesn't need it. I mean, why go through all the effort to put Batgirl directly in continuity with The Killing Joke and then dismiss Year One? I just don't get this new continuity, it's a random pick and mix shambles.

[KnightWing]

Batman- Cool retake on Year One, but Year One sorta doesn't need it. I mean, why go through all the effort to put Batgirl directly in continuity with The Killing Joke and then dismiss Year One? I just don't get this new continuity, it's a random pick and mix shambles.

Actually, if you notice, 90% of Year One is unaffected by #0. #0 mostly just works around Year One, since it's between when Bruce comes back and when he decides to be modeled after a bat.

[Stavros]

I'll agree that it's fundamentally the same basic story, but the visual shift between this and Year one is huge. Batgirl still has Joker opening the door wearing a Hawaiian shirt just like the killing joke, but Batman now has a different base, new stories about his disguised exploits (which mirrors Year one but isn't compatible with it) and it has an entire gang of Red Hoods running around. Plus all the super-modern tech he has is nothing like the fairly basic stuff of year one. Lastly it changes the Gordon/Wayne's interactions during the initial Batman investigation. Like I said, it's basically the same story but it's clearly replacing rather than complementing Year One.

I mean, if you're going to reboot fine but it's so confusing that so much is left in and so much dropped.

[Donomark]

Batgirl's Zero Issue made the timeline more confusing for me. So she first met Batman four years ago, meaning in Year Two of the new timeline, was Batgirl for one whole year in Year Three of the timeline, was paralyzed for three solid year, which puts this at Year Six and not Five like it's been established?

[KnightWing]

Batman is in Year Six or Seven now, because he was operating in secret (sort of) before Superman's debut.

[Molly]

That really fucks up the Robins, too. Dick could be, at most 19. Jason could now be, at oldest, like 17. Which puts Tim at 14, and I don't even want to think about Damian in that mix.

[Stavros]

DC, having it's cake and eating it too, although given the limited timeframe in which that cake was prepared it's really not as good as it should be.

[Donomark]

Batman is in Year Six or Seven now, because he was operating in secret (sort of) before Superman's debut.

Alright, but are the timeline deliniations with the sidekicks in reference to the mainstream DCU 5 year history or Batman's personal history?

[Molly]

Who knows? I was trying to logically fit four Robins (five if Steph Brown still exsists), into six years.

[KnightWing]

Let's put it this way. #0 shows Dick being a teenager while still being in the Flying Graysons (Jason looks maybe a year younger, Tim is 11-12). So let's say Dick's parents died and he became Robin in the first year of Batman's career; that means he could be fourteen when he becomes Robin, thus being 20 or 21 now (which fits, since Barbara is supposed to be 21-22 now, and she's usually a year or so older than Dick).

Now, if Batman's career is 6 years total thus far, let's figure this timeline out.

Year 1: Dick becomes Robin at age 14.

Year 2: Dick.

Year 3: Dick.

Year 4: Dick leaves to become Nightwing at age 18; Jason Todd (age 17) immediately replaces him. Probably in the same year (could even be as little as a few months later), Jason is killed.

Year 5: Tim comes in as Robin/Red Robin (age 16-17). This part is a little unclear. Teen Titans #0 is supposed to show the revised origin for Tim, so this is kinda up in the air at the moment.

Year 6: Bruce "dies." Tim transitions into Red Robin (unless that was always his identity in New52?). Dick becomes Batman, Damian is his Robin. This lasts for, say, six months. Bruce returns, takes Damian as the new Robin.

The only real problem with this is that it compresses the time that Dick and Tim spent as Robins. However, as far as we've seen, they're written exactly the same way as before. Even if Dick only spent 3 or 4 years with Bruce, that apparently had the same impact that the 6-8 years he spent with him in previous continuity had.

And, to be fair, comics have always had the issue of ages and timelines. Heroes are generally supposed to be "eternally 27" or some such nonsense, and they simply avoided setting hard timelines in order to preserve the vague illusion. The problem here is that now DC is actually drawing attention to it, so it's easier to poke holes.

[Donomark]

Let's put it this way. #0 shows Dick being a teenager while still being in the Flying Graysons (Jason looks maybe a year younger, Tim is 11-12). So let's say Dick's parents died and he became Robin in the first year of Batman's career; that means he could be fourteen when he becomes Robin, thus being 20 or 21 now (which fits, since Barbara is supposed to be 21-22 now, and she's usually a year or so older than Dick).

Now, if Batman's career is 6 years total thus far, let's figure this timeline out.

Year 1: Dick becomes Robin at age 14.

Year 2: Dick.

Year 3: Dick.

Year 4: Dick leaves to become Nightwing at age 18; Jason Todd (age 17) immediately replaces him. Probably in the same year (could even be as little as a few months later), Jason is killed.

Year 5: Tim comes in as Robin/Red Robin (age 16-17). This part is a little unclear. Teen Titans #0 is supposed to show the revised origin for Tim, so this is kinda up in the air at the moment.

Year 6: Bruce "dies." Tim transitions into Red Robin (unless that was always his identity in New52?). Dick becomes Batman, Damian is his Robin. This lasts for, say, six months. Bruce returns, takes Damian as the new Robin.

The only real problem with this is that it compresses the time that Dick and Tim spent as Robins. However, as far as we've seen, they're written exactly the same way as before. Even if Dick only spent 3 or 4 years with Bruce, that apparently had the same impact that the 6-8 years he spent with him in previous continuity had.

And, to be fair, comics have always had the issue of ages and timelines. Heroes are generally supposed to be "eternally 27" or some such nonsense, and they simply avoided setting hard timelines in order to preserve the vague illusion. The problem here is that now DC is actually drawing attention to it, so it's easier to poke holes.

I appreciate what you're doing, but the whole cock-up is too ridiculous for me to take seriously. I mean shit, even post-Zero Hour the idea that the Modern DCU had only been around for 10 years was a bit much to swallow. Trying to smush together so much supposed character development and history into half a decade is folly and everyone at DC knows it. I don't understand why they just haven't vaguely addressed it as "years ago" and leave it at that. Why would any new reader be interested in a history they'll never see if it sets up a past for characters whose continuities contradict those of the version from before August of 2011? Why does having 4 Robins matter over having 5 and 3 Batgirls, especially if Babs was basically Batgirl on the weekends for only a year? DC's absolutely trying to have their cake and eat it too, but it's way too contradictory for anybody to honestly take seriously or even keep track of. Listing the series of events isn't going to get people excited, it's just going to frustrate them further.

[SuaveStar]

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/post/163162-/

Nightwing 0 preview. Only posting this, as there's a part, which seems to try and imitate some of the dialogue from Dark Knight Rises.

[Koete]

Further proof DC has no idea what they're doing.

[dc20willsave]

Further proof DC has no idea what they're doing.