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The relaunch of
DC comics has fans talking. Will this usher in a new era for the classic publisher or just further muddle up their already confusing continuity?
Yes, this article really isn't comic book movie related, but news and talk of this event has been all over comicbookmovie.com enough that I'm sure people won't care. And yes, this is another
fan boy rant on the new DC comics relaunch. This was a topic that I was going to avoid seeing how so much has already been written about it, but my friends and I have been talking about it so much that I found that I did have a lot to say on the subject, so here it is.
Well, unless you've been living under a rock, you know that DC made the controversial decision to relaunch their continuity in September, restarting 52 of their titles at issue #1, with updated costumes and origins, modern storytelling, etc. Of course, fans were divided down the middle over this news, but you can't deny one thing...
It got people talking.
All eyes are on DC now as people want to know what will happen to their favorite characters, what events will be retconned, who's origin will be changed, etc. Many have said that it's nothing more than a publicity stunt, which I kind of have to agree with. But if it's a publicity stunt, it's already paying off huge. My friends and I have been talking about this since it was announced, and I have to say, I'm still a little torn on the subject.
I can see a lot of good coming from this event. It's clear that DC wants to use this new continuity to bring in new readers by starting off fresh, giving us stories not bogged down by years of continuity, and this is one thing that excites me. In high school, I was a big comic reader, usually waiting with baited breath for my monthly comics to come out, following them like an old lady follows soap operas. Sadly, college happened and I didn't really have the time or cash to keep up with comics so
Wizard Magazine became my window into the comic book world. But Wizard closed it's doors this past winter and I decided that it was a good time as ever to finally dive back into reading comics again, except there was one problem: I had no idea where to begin. Batman, my personal favorite, now had an annoying son now and was leader of a world wide army of Batmen.
Wonder Woman had been re-imagined to a street wise last survivor of the Amazons, and now there were multiple Lantern Corps. For the most part I played catch up, but there were still little bits and pieces that I was missing.
When I heard about the DC relaunch, I was kind of excited because it would give me a fresh start back into comics. I was especially excited to read Batman again because I'm not a fan of what
Grant Morrison has been doing on the title. I'm sure there's many other fans like myself who want to get back into reading comics but don't know where to start, and this relaunch could help them. The last time DC did something similar to this was after they consolidated their continuity after
Crisis on Infinite Earths, and it was a great new beginning for DC. Post-Crisis, we got
John Byrne's run on Superman,
Batman: Year One,
Green Lantern:
Emerald Knight, and many other classic stories. Much like post-Crisis, this relaunch could lead to many exciting possibilities for DC, but it could also bring many new problems.
Warner Bros. tower (Photo credit: Gage Skidmore)
