Topic: DC Comics Reboot

[murs47]

Pod, you should check out Snyder's current run on Detective Comics. Batman should be pretty much identical to that. I personally love what Snyder's done so far with Batman.

[Cyber Burn]

Ehhh... maybe I'm naive or something, but I'm not too terrible worked up about this shake-up. Honestly, DC needed to do something 'cause they had become too stagnant as a creative business. While there are some changes that I am certainly not thrilled about (yes, including the 90s-ification of many of the books and designs), overall I'm kinda pumped to see how this whole thing shakes out. Between The Ladyfriend and I, we are getting 50 of the 52 new titles (Blackhawks and Men at War hold no interest with either of us). Books I'm most looking forward to:

Animal Man
Swamp Thing
Green Lantern: The New Guardians
Hawk & Dove (just to see how bad the Liefeld art will get before the book gets canned)
Aquaman
Justice League Dark (closest thing to Shadowpact I'll ever get again)
Red Hood & the Outsiders (... what?!)
Batwing
DC Comics Presents (3 - 6 issue arcs featuring C-grade and lower heroes)

Emphasis Added

You sir, are part of the problem.

I guess I'm part of the problem too. I'm not a Liefield fan, but I am a Hawk and Dove fan. I haven't bought a comic book in who knows how long but I am curious, so I'll check out a few of the first issues.

My list:

Green Arrow
Hawk and Dove
Deathstroke
The Flash
Green Lantern - Probably a few of the related titles
Batman - Probably a few of the related titles
Legion - I'm still up in the air on

[kkhohoho]

My 'list':

Action Comics: Because it's Grant Morrison.

I honestly haven't been reading a lot of recent DC... recently, and new comics are kind of expensive these days, and often with too little content for the cost, so there isn't too much I'm interested in here (And it doesn't help that they canned the JSA,)... but I really like Grant, so I might check AC#1 out.

[cmdrkoenig67]

DC is really gambling here, with the odds  (and a bad comicbook market) heavily against them.  I have a feeling their prices will go up too.

BTW:  How on Earth does Mr Liefeld still get work?

Dana

[BentonGrey]

DC is really gambling here, with the odds  (and a bad comicbook market) heavily against them.  I have a feeling their prices will go up too.

BTW:  How on Earth does Mr Liefeld still get work?

Dana

I just can't understand that either, Dana.  He's pretty much a living joke these days....so how does anyone think it is a good idea to hire him?  I guess DC really is trying to evoke the 90's, and he is pretty indicative of everything that was wrong with comics in that decade...

[kkhohoho]

DC is really gambling here, with the odds  (and a bad comicbook market) heavily against them.  I have a feeling their prices will go up too.

BTW:  How on Earth does Mr Liefeld still get work?

Dana

I just can't understand that either, Dana.  He's pretty much a living joke these days....so how does anyone think it is a good idea to hire him?  I guess DC really is trying to evoke the 90's, and he is pretty indicative of everything that was wrong with comics in that decade...

Simple answer; he's so bad that people would pay good money just to see it for themselves.

[cmdrkoenig67]

LOL!  I'll have to pass....I got enough of his "art" when I used to buy New Mutants and later X-Force, back in the day.

Anyway, I hope you guys that love DC will find some things that are good (things you can enjoy) in the reboot.

Dana

[John Jr.]

DC got a lot of attention with the reboot, the first issues will get a boost in sales, but the quality of stories will decide who'll stick around or not. And I don't know if they'll get new readers or just "returning" readers. People are speculating the "Back to the 90s" angle is intentional, an effort to get back readers who gave up comics.
Unfortunately the reboot is a great "jump off" point too, so we'll have to wait some months before we can say if it worked (sales will still be strong months after the reboot) or failed (sales get back to "normal" months after the reboot).

[Podmark]

DC got a lot of attention with the reboot, the first issues will get a boost in sales, but the quality of stories will decide who'll stick around or not. And I don't know if they'll get new readers or just "returning" readers. People are speculating the "Back to the 90s" angle is intentional, an effort to get back readers who gave up comics.
Unfortunately the reboot is a great "jump off" point too, so we'll have to wait some months before we can say if it worked (sales will still be strong months after the reboot) or failed (sales get back to "normal" months after the reboot).

Personally I'm betting the print comics will be back to around normal levels within 6-10 months. However the digital sales (the whole line is going digital) could make a big difference for DC.

The initial sales estimates looks good though. Justice League will be over 200k making it the top selling comic of 2011. I believe 6 other titles are set to be over 100k. So the relaunch will be very good for DC initially.


If the relaunch is successful I expect Marvel will pull something similar within 3 years.

[John Jr.]

Didio on Fan expo 11:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

“Should we tease?” asked O.M.A.C. co-writer and DC co-publisher DiDio. The rest agreed, and James Robinson confirmed that he is working on a new Justice Society project with artist Nicola Scott, and that the parallel world Earth-2 will make a return. The crowd erupted into thunderous applause.

"We don't want them to just be cameos and then forgotten," DiDio said. "We've waited on JSA because we really wanted to get the details right. We were hammering out the characters as late as yesterday."

[Cyber Burn]

Didio on Fan expo 11:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

“Should we tease?” asked O.M.A.C. co-writer and DC co-publisher DiDio. The rest agreed, and James Robinson confirmed that he is working on a new Justice Society project with artist Nicola Scott, and that the parallel world Earth-2 will make a return. The crowd erupted into thunderous applause.

"We don't want them to just be cameos and then forgotten," DiDio said. "We've waited on JSA because we really wanted to get the details right. We were hammering out the characters as late as yesterday."

That makes me feel a little better. The JSA have always been some of my DC favorites.

[Glitch Girl]

Early reviews of week 1, mostly positive (one decidedly and unsurprisingly, not).
http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/08/30/dc-comics-relaunch-preview/

[AfghanAnt]

Just read Flashpoint and Justice League and I am really excited about what is next. It really was a ride worth waiting for.

[murs47]

Just read them both. Flashpoint's conclusion was great. What a breath of fresh air to finally have an event be worthy of the word. Justice League was a tease...a good tease...but it was just too short.

[AfghanAnt]

Just read them both. Flashpoint's conclusion was great. What a breath of fresh air to finally have an event be worthy of the word. Justice League was a tease...a good tease...but it was just too short.

I completely agree and I actually found myself reading Justice League of America Vol 3 #1 to compare and I have to say Grant Morrison's #1 14 years ago not only introduced me to all the characters, it left me full  but wanting more. JL #1 just left me wanting. I mean the character design pages where nice but I would have rather had more story.

Oh and only Jim Lee can make these 90s costumes look good.

[Tomato]

Just read JL #1 (trying out the digital comics... it's ok. I'd prefer it if I could change some of the program's options around, but it's decent enough) I'm kind of in the same boat... I like what's in there, but the whole issue was pretty much Batman and GL meeting for the first time.

[BentonGrey]

Just read them both. Flashpoint's conclusion was great. What a breath of fresh air to finally have an event be worthy of the word. Justice League was a tease...a good tease...but it was just too short.

I completely agree and I actually found myself reading Justice League of America Vol 3 #1 to compare and I have to say Grant Morrison's #1 14 years ago not only introduced me to all the characters, it left me full  but wanting more. JL #1 just left me wanting. I mean the character design pages where nice but I would have rather had more story.

Oh and only Jim Lee can make these 90s costumes look good.

I'm going to have to flip through this in the comic book store.  You know AA, Morrison's JLA did handle the large cast and pacing extremely well.  That's true.  Those were some very good books.

[Podmark]

Just finished up my day's comics. Justice League was pretty decent. The pace was (not unexpectedly) on the slow side, but the interaction between Hal and Bruce was pretty good, and the art was great. I'll get the next one.

EDIT:
Bleeding Cool pointed out that the hooded woman from Flashpoint is making little where's Waldo appearances in the new #1s. She was in JL, but I didn't read Flashpoint so I never would have noticed.
Fun and a little creepy.

[Talavar]

I checked out Justice League #1 as well (a friend had picked it up, so reading it for free is a big plus).  It felt ...underwhelming.  GL meets Batman, and the pair of them meet Superman, Apokalyptic shenanigans are afoot, and Vic Stone plays football.  It's very well done, but for the first issue of this major launch, very little actually happens.

I did enjoy

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

GL's huge arrogance about what he can handle - after all, in regular situations a green lantern is incredibly powerful.  And then he tries to take Superman in for questioning, and gets knocked on his butt.

[yell0w_lantern]

Just finished up my day's comics. Justice League was pretty decent. The pace was (not unexpectedly) on the slow side, but the interaction between Hal and Bruce was pretty good, and the art was great. I'll get the next one.

It's unfortunate that we've come to expect so little of comics.  They could speed it up. Comics used to tell entire stories (plural) in a single issue. Now we have "arcs" and "events" that drag out one [usually mediocre at best] story in an effort to keep people buying the next installment.

[Talavar]

Just finished up my day's comics. Justice League was pretty decent. The pace was (not unexpectedly) on the slow side, but the interaction between Hal and Bruce was pretty good, and the art was great. I'll get the next one.

It's unfortunate that we've come to expect so little of comics.  They could speed it up. Comics used to tell entire stories (plural) in a single issue. Now we have "arcs" and "events" that drag out one [usually mediocre at best] story in an effort to keep people buying the next installment.

Writing for the trades can be annoying, but complete stories or multiple complete stories in twenty-odd pages are not better.

[BentonGrey]

Just finished up my day's comics. Justice League was pretty decent. The pace was (not unexpectedly) on the slow side, but the interaction between Hal and Bruce was pretty good, and the art was great. I'll get the next one.

It's unfortunate that we've come to expect so little of comics.  They could speed it up. Comics used to tell entire stories (plural) in a single issue. Now we have "arcs" and "events" that drag out one [usually mediocre at best] story in an effort to keep people buying the next installment.

Writing for the trades can be annoying, but complete stories or multiple complete stories in twenty-odd pages are not better.

I don't know about that Tal.  I've read some great one-and-done tales.  You can certainly tell stories that are satisfying, yet still part of a larger picture, like Morrison did in JLA.  Those stories aren't empty, and yet they aren't rushed either.

[Podmark]

Just finished up my day's comics. Justice League was pretty decent. The pace was (not unexpectedly) on the slow side, but the interaction between Hal and Bruce was pretty good, and the art was great. I'll get the next one.

It's unfortunate that we've come to expect so little of comics.  They could speed it up. Comics used to tell entire stories (plural) in a single issue. Now we have "arcs" and "events" that drag out one [usually mediocre at best] story in an effort to keep people buying the next installment.

That is generally true, but in this case I was speaking about Geoff Johns in particular. JL was in line with the average pacing of his books.

[Talavar]

Just finished up my day's comics. Justice League was pretty decent. The pace was (not unexpectedly) on the slow side, but the interaction between Hal and Bruce was pretty good, and the art was great. I'll get the next one.

It's unfortunate that we've come to expect so little of comics.  They could speed it up. Comics used to tell entire stories (plural) in a single issue. Now we have "arcs" and "events" that drag out one [usually mediocre at best] story in an effort to keep people buying the next installment.

Writing for the trades can be annoying, but complete stories or multiple complete stories in twenty-odd pages are not better.

I don't know about that Tal.  I've read some great one-and-done tales.  You can certainly tell stories that are satisfying, yet still part of a larger picture, like Morrison did in JLA.  Those stories aren't empty, and yet they aren't rushed either.

I agree that you can tell stories that are satisfying by the issue but still part of a larger whole - I did say that not enough happened of relevance in the new Justice League reboot, and good one-and-dones exist, even if they are rare.  What I was really objecting to was the idea multiple complete stories in one issue that are good.  I suppose it's theoretically possible that they exist.

[John Jr.]

Morrison talked about his Superman with Newsarama (and they even got a preview of the new Action #1). Morrison is really trying to get Supes back to his 1938 roots like the "champion of the opressed". It will be a little harder to make new Batman vs Superman fights, since both will be outlaws vigilantes now.

Interview:
http://www.newsarama.com/comics/grant-morrison-action-comics-110902.html
Preview:
http://www.newsarama.com/php/multimedia/album.php?aid=44117

[martialstorm]

For me:
Ongoing monthly:
Stormwatch
Superman
Batman & Robin
Justice League

Wait for the Trade:
Action Comics

Checking Out the First Issue:
Captain Atom - I've read the comparisons of this version of Doctor Manhattan but it also reminds me of Doctor Solar.
Nightwing: Although I wished he kept the cowl
Swamp Thing
Animal Man

[Courtnall6]

I still can't get over how ridiculous Superman looks in that farmer fanboy get up.

[Cyber Burn]

Missed Justice League, the Comic Book store was sold out, as was Barnes and Noble, as was the two other places we went. 

On a side note, has anyone heard if the Red Circle characters are going to make a return?

[murs47]

On a side note, has anyone heard if the Red Circle characters are going to make a return?

Nothing's been said yet. I think they're slowly releasing news about non-DC characters. THUNDER Agents was just confirmed as returning a few days ago. Wait and see I guess.

[JeyNyce]

From what I'm reading online is that DC is trying bring their heroes to a more current time.  That they are all still pretty new to being heroes and so some of them will make mistakes and such.  If this is the way they're going, then why not make an "Ultimate" universe and reboot the heroes there?  Mind you, I haven't read a comic in a few years, I just hate it when they change something that I grew up with or maybe that's just me getting old.