DC's New 52: Reviews and Discussion (Spoilers welcolme and likely)

[Praetor_Shinzon]

i for one will continue to make childish complaints about the reboot...

[Allyn Gibson]

Praetor_Shinzon wrote:

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i for one will continue to make childish complaints about the reboot...

Given the latest news out of San Diego -- Tim Drake was never Robin (despite a year of comics that have stated the opposite) -- childish complaints aren't always so childish.

This news may explain why Jeff Lemire's Robins book is MIA. It doesn't explain why Tim Drake has been referred to as a Robin, especially by Damian in recent issues of Batman and Robin.

[shivkala]

If I may play Devil's Advocate for a moment:



I'm not sure a full-line, hard reset would be a good idea, despite its many good points.

For one, as evidenced by The Legion of Super-Heroes and its many re-boots, it's hard not to revisit some storylines and "update" them. While I thought the post-Zero Hour Legion did a good job of this, others were upset that certain things like the Suneater, the Fatal Five, the team fighting Mordru, the team taking on Darkseid, etc. had all been done before. And when they broke away with that, such as when they killed Leviathan (aka Colossal Boy), they freaked out.

Another thing is that it would have made introducing these 52 titles and characters a nightmare. The Ultimate line is an example of how to do it right, since it started with one title (Ultimate Spider-Man, then introduced Ultimate X-Men, both of which introduced ideas, concepts, and characters that lead to The Ultimates, then they lauched Ultimate Fantastic Four over the course of years). A hard-reboot of the entire line would be a nightmare to avoid 52 concepts all appearing at once.

Finally, there's throwing the baby out with the bathwater. In the case of Batman and Green Lantern, why bother doing a hard reset when you have top selling books and recent, popular storylines? Then there are the other titles, such as Aquaman which benefit from being able to pick and choose what did and did not happen. Now most of the titles don't seem to be taking advantage of that, but some titles are. It's nothing new, as the post-Crisis DCU did the same thing. Grant Morrison has even taken advantage of that by saying that all of Batman's history was in-continuity prior to Flashpoint, it's just that some of the trippier stuff didn't happen as presented in the 50's and 60's, but was rather a hallucination of some kind. So, instead of reinventing the wheel and retelling the same story, the reader is asked to accept that the key parts happened, but happened differently than they remember. Thus, Batgirl can still claim The Killing Joke is in continuity, but it may have happened a little differently than Alan Moore and Brian Bolland presented it. I'm fine with that.

You could argue that the New-52 did not do a good job of this, and I would agree in some cases, but that still does not mean you had to dump everything. The condensed 5 year timeline, being an example of where it goes wrong. However, this is more a problem with execution than the idea itself.

[Mike Farley]

If they're going to get rid of Tim's time as Robin, they might as well have gotten rid of Tim altogether.

Let him hang with Wally, Donna, and all the other popular characters that DcNu doesn't have room for anymore.

[Admiral_Young]

Oh dear. This is going to piss off more fans lol if this indeed so. More tinkering and retconning and why a full on reboot was probably the way to go if they were going to just continue making changes anyway.

I've been wondering about Jeff Lemaire's Robins too. I guess editorial changed their minds about since they're continuing to tweak Batman's past.

[Trekker4747]

Well, it seems like most of the titles came out okay with the soft/semi-"reboot." I think "Batman" probably needed a harder one with some origin story/early Batman career like Superman got but -yeah- I get all of the backstory and stuff he has was wanted to keep intact to please many people. But it seems like a lot has now been crammed into a short amount of story time (multiple Robins, the Killing Joke and so much more) I think Batman could have dealt with a tougher reboot or one of his four books could have taken place in an early Batman career or been an origin/beginnings even getting to a point of introducing a Dick Grayson Robin.

[Professor Zoom]

Trekker4747 wrote:

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Well, it seems like most of the titles came out okay with the soft/semi-"reboot." I think "Batman" probably needed a harder one with some origin story/early Batman career like Superman got but -yeah- I get all of the backstory and stuff he has was wanted to keep intact to please many people. But it seems like a lot has now been crammed into a short amount of story time (multiple Robins, the Killing Joke and so much more) I think Batman could have dealt with a tougher reboot or one of his four books could have taken place in an early Batman career or been an origin/beginnings even getting to a point of introducing a Dick Grayson Robin.

Perhaps from a creative point of view, yeah, but from a business point of view, no. It was far to popular to just wipe the slate clean.

And to be frank, I haven't read Batman in YEARS, and it wasn't hard to pick up these number 1s and understand what was going on. Bruce Wayne dresses up at a Bat and fights crime. There has been nothing particularly confusing. It's like back in the day when you would buy issue 137 of something to try it out....

A clean slate though WOULD make things like was Tim Drake Robin or not more clear, but whatever, in a few years no one will care.

[shivkala]

Well, again, if most of the Batman books are good as they are, why bother doing a hard reset, even if it is to fit Tim in, somewhere. The problem is not in needing to do a hard reset, the problem is saying that Bruce got his start as Batman five years ago. Even if they did a hard reset, either they'd have to say he had 4 Robins in 5 years or they'd have to slowly reintroduce each Robin when the time was right, so that by 2031 we'd have all four Robins.

The other problem is, that Batman's origin is a simple one that doesn't necessarily benefit from tweaks. Superman's origin, yes, you have to decide on what Krypton was like, how Ma and Pa Kent came across baby Kal-El, when/how they died, how Clark came to Metropolis and got his job at the Daily Planet, etc.

With Batman, yeah you could tweak his "tour around the world" and there's the question of "does he know who killed his parents," but aside from that, it's only minor things that are changed with each origin.

There's also the fact that in the 25 years between the Man of Steel and Flashpoint Superman's origin had been told 3 times (Mos, Birthright, and Secret Origin) not mention one "fake out" (The "Return to Krytpon" storyline in 2000), minor tweaks between Infinite Crisis and Secret Origin, and the eventual New-52 origin.

Contrast that with Batman, who got what most consider the epitome of a good origin in Batman: Year One that still serves as the origin of choice, again, with minor tweaks which don't change Miller's story (does Bruce know about Joe Chill or not, what did Bruce do in his time away from Gotham, etc.).

I just don't see messing with an established, cherished origin story just to shoehorn Tim Drake into a 5 year timeline.

And again, I agree with you that the 5 year timeline is a problem. I just don't agree the solution would have been to do a hard reboot on the Batman franchise.

[Nerys Myk]

Mike Farley wrote:

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If they're going to get rid of Tim's time as Robin, they might as well have gotten rid of Tim altogether.

Let him hang with Wally, Donna, and all the other popular characters that DcNu doesn't have room for anymore.

From what I read he takes the name Red Robin from the get go. So he's still a "Robin."

[Admiral_Young]

Yet not Robin. There is a specific reason why Tim took the name Red Robin...it was because of Damian. Changing the past so that he's Red Robin from the start...what's the point of that?

[Nerys Myk]

Admiral_Young wrote:

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Yet not Robin. There is a specific reason why Tim took the name Red Robin...it was because of Damian. Changing the past so that he's Red Robin from the start...what's the point of that?

We'll find out when the issue comes out.

[Admiral_Young]

I guess. This will be another contradiction though, as Allyn stated we've already a year of 52'Verse comics that state that Tim was a Robin, so already they're retconning which is why we're making such childish complaints

[Nerys Myk]

Admiral_Young wrote:

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I guess. This will be another contradiction though, as Allyn stated we've already a year of 52'Verse comics that state that Tim was a Robin, so already they're retconning which is why we're making such childish complaints

So they changed their mind. No big deal really. Comics have always been "works in progress". Sort of like Star Trek.

[Admiral_Young]

It's a big deal for those of us who do care about this kind of thing. I know you personally don't from your posts, and I respect that. It just is an aspect of the relaunch that I've disagreed with. One of the cons if you will.

As I've said in the past in the thread there have been more cons than pros for me personally. I've said a ton of great things about the relaunch books that I'm still reading. Aquaman and Wonder Woman have been one of the great beneficiaries. There have been other books as well.

[Derishton]

Nerys Myk wrote:

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So they changed their mind. No big deal really. Comics have always been "works in progress". Sort of like Star Trek.

It's pure semantics - Batman and Robin 10 had all the Robins arguing about who was the best Robin. Nobody took the time to put a note beside Tim's title.