DC to REBOOT???

[theenglish]

To be "obsessive" about anything is a sad and lonely thing...

Fixed that for you.

Not just limited to comics. Sports, quilting, stamp collecting, shows about future people in spaceships, facebook, whatever....obsessing over the minutia of detail in any of these things is pathetic.

One need only look at the various forums here to find a plethora of examples of obsessing over irrelevant crap from category 5.

Don't understand it myself, but there it is.

No no no. It is perfectly fine to obsess about sports. When you paint your body the colors of your favorite team and attend their games shirtless while rattling off random statistics of every player on the team and how they rank against other team's players and challenge others to fights when they disagree with you, it is considered normal behavior. Anyone who thinks otherwise is probably a momma's boy who can't dress themselves.

Well, sports exist in the real world and you can't reboot the past World Series, Superbowls, etc. They all happened, and the stats will not change.

That said, I just wish a reboot would be just that. Why don't writers and producers have the balls to stand up to fanboys and just reboot. The one thing that really made me angry with Star Trek 2009 was the sad attempt to shoehorn the original continuity into the story. There was still an assortment of errors throughout the movie that were still irreconcilable with the original continuity. It just causes problems.

DC needs to wipe their slate clean and begin fresh without any hang ups from previous stories.

 

[Admiral_Young]

I would disagree and said there was no need to reboot or relaunch anything.

 

[theenglish]

I would disagree and said there was no need to reboot or relaunch anything.

Yes, I would agree with that too, but if you are going to reboot the characters just do it. DC keeps trying to have its cake and eat it too, and it just doesn't work.

 

[23skidoo]

That said, I just wish a reboot would be just that. Why don't writers and producers have the balls to stand up to fanboys and just reboot. The one thing that really made me angry with Star Trek 2009 was the sad attempt to shoehorn the original continuity into the story. There was still an assortment of errors throughout the movie that were still irreconcilable with the original continuity. It just causes problems.

DC needs to wipe their slate clean and begin fresh without any hang ups from previous stories.

Because if this fails, DC is dead.

By couching it in an alternative timeline they can easily push the reset button if readers reject what they're trying to do. You can't really compare it with Star Trek because they had no choice - if they wanted to continue telling stories on film wih Kirk, Spock, etc. they either had to do some sort of reboot, or retire the franchise. And had they attempted a complete "do over" it would have been rejected and failed. It was still a gamble, but by establishing, again, an alternate timeline they avoided the incredibly negative, franchise-killing negative opinion that would have happened, had they suddenly said that the 40 years of storytelling was being dismissed.

And while DC is driving away many of its longtime readership with the reboot, it isn't driving everyone away and this still needs to remain their solid base of support. If they just rely on the gamble that kids are going to flock to DC simply because the comics are being made available online and they've put a new coat of paint on Superman, it's simply too much of a gamble for any sane company. They need to have an exit strategy.

Alex

 

[Icemizer]

The problem with a hard reboot is not the comics and not the creators who I am sure would happily start from scratch in a new sandbox. The problem is 50 years of established merchandising, promotion, advertising and public perception. You are caught in catch 22 situation. If you reboot from scratch sales on older merchandise are going to dry up and fall off the bottom line.
Whos to say that the new non red underwear Superman image is going to sell? So you bite the bullet and keep the original image alive while hoping to introduce a new version that you hope sells. If the new image fails its relatively easy to bring back the old one.
Dont blame the creators, editors, artists, or even the people running DC, they are owned body and soul by Time Warner and there is no way they are going to allow the millions of dollars in rich history already established to fall by the wayside and off the bottom line. So those creators, editors and artists do they best they can under the simple directive, "Use stuff we already have to create something new to earn more money but dont hurt sales of existing merchandise". An impossible directive to follow and please anyone except the bean counters who run the planet.

 

[Broccoli]

Fixed that for you.

Not just limited to comics. Sports, quilting, stamp collecting, shows about future people in spaceships, facebook, whatever....obsessing over the minutia of detail in any of these things is pathetic.

One need only look at the various forums here to find a plethora of examples of obsessing over irrelevant crap from category 5.

Don't understand it myself, but there it is.

No no no. It is perfectly fine to obsess about sports. When you paint your body the colors of your favorite team and attend their games shirtless while rattling off random statistics of every player on the team and how they rank against other team's players and challenge others to fights when they disagree with you, it is considered normal behavior. Anyone who thinks otherwise is probably a momma's boy who can't dress themselves.

Well, sports exist in the real world and you can't reboot the past World Series, Superbowls, etc. They all happened, and the stats will not change.

Players change. Teams change. Rules change. And some sports fans will always cling onto what they consider their "era" and can go on complaining about what is coming next.

Fundamentally speaking, it is really no different. Rattling off random sports stats or superhero story points, the obsessive behavior is the same. One is just more acceptable than the other in society for some reason when they are both just as silly.

 

[JD]

So the old DC Universe (or New Earth or whatever) will still exist after the reboot then? I was wondering if this was going to be a JJ Abrams Trek style new timeline, or if it was supposed to be completely over writing the old.

 

[Broccoli]

So the old DC Universe (or New Earth or whatever) will still exist after the reboot then? I was wondering if this was going to be a JJ Abrams Trek style new timeline, or if it was supposed to be completely over writing the old.

No. All your comics will magically disappear going back to Action Comics #1. Nic Cage is going to be pissed.

Seriously though, no one is quite sure. Some things seem to be starting over from scratch. Other things seem to be continuing on as before. And others seem to be a mix. If anything, it is more of a "rejiggering" of the DCU.

 

[Indysolo]

Just a heads up I got one of my books in the mail from DC and I see that a lot of the new titles are now available for subscription direct from DC. It's great if you only want to read one or two books a month and don't live near a comic shop like myself and don't mind getting your books a little later after the release date.

And if you want to save a little money you can wait and buy them digitally. While DC is doing day-and-date with print and digital, after a month the digital editions will drop in price by $1.

Neil

 

[Admiral_Young]

DC isn't dead if this blows up in their face. There will be severe repercussions sales wise but they will just have some kind event and revert back to the current continuity. If they wanted their cake and to eat to, as has been discussed in the thread before they could have kept their current continuity and simply created an Ultimate Version. They have Earth One they're developing. They could easily create a new Earth and restart everything in there. Considering they have stated they're doing this primarily to draw in "new readers" as well as casual readers this would have been the more logical route. Trying to make everyone happy by creating a meshed universe wasn't the way to do things. Anyways it is gonna be fascinating to see how this all turns out in the coming months.

 

[Myasishchev]

I suspect DiDio and Lee might get fired if this goes south, however.

 

[Gov Kodos]

I suspect DiDio and Lee might get fired if this goes south, however.

I'm sure Ms Nelson will be making sure it's not her who takes the fall. She's supposed to be getting DCE going in the wake of the Potter franchise which she was a big part of as I understand it. In the aftermath of the GL fiasco and Nolan's last Batman film coming I would guess folks at her level are starting to look for where to place blame. I would expect Didio, Lee, and Johns are doing everything they can to make this reboot come off as smoth as possible because if it doesn't they aren't the only ones who'll have to worry.

 

[Icemizer]

How will you define going south in this instance? They already know and will have no doubt planned for a number of books in the initial release to fail. They also no doubt have other books ready to go that didnt make the initial arbitrary 52 book cut. So what percentage in sales drop will constitute a failure and how long after the initial release will this apply?

 

[JoeZhang]

How will you define going south in this instance? They already know and will have no doubt planned for a number of books in the initial release to fail. They also no doubt have other books ready to go that didnt make the initial arbitrary 52 book cut. So what percentage in sales drop will constitute a failure and how long after the initial release will this apply?

Does it even need to 'go south'? I would think that if after six or twelve months, DCs market share or dollar share of the market is the same this will be seen as failure.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

They'll be happy if they don't lose ground and position themselves better in the digital market. [Egon]"Print is dead."[/Egon]

The likelihood of this "blowing up in their faces" is nil.

 

[Myasishchev]

Yeah, I should've phrased it better than "going south," more like "does not meet expectations," which I perceive as somewhat (perhaps unrealistically) high. In any event, I was originally going to say this feels like their (the current regime's) last chance to make DC an aspect of Time-Warner that pulls significantly more than its own weight.

So, like, I've seen the covers for most of the November releases.

Positivity: is it weird that I might buy Grifter? I really like the covers I've seen--they're maybe a little generic, but the well-done kind of generic--and the premise is interesting. Especially if it turns out he's just crazy.

Also, this Men of War cover is sweet.

Negativity: is the very concept of the Red Lanterns designed specifically to bring us the worst images in comic book history? If not, it's a happy coincidence.

Like, even assuming for the moment that's the kind of thing one feels comfortable telling the world they enjoy, it's not even done that well. Blood's actually kind of hard to draw, but it's not difficult to understand a torrent of blood shouldn't sheet like that over a human(oid) body.

 

[Professor Zoom]

And while DC is driving away many of its longtime readership with the reboot, it isn't driving everyone away and this still needs to remain their solid base of support.

Alex

ARE they though? How many have left? Or saying they are leaving? There are loud voices saying they quit, but, do loud voices actually mean "many"?

 

[theenglish]

I also don't really buy the idea of red being the color of blood for every single one of the strange and bizarre species that populate the GL Universe.

Now, can I ask if it is confirmed that the prices of one month old digital comics will be less? Also, will you actually be able to read the digital versions offline?

 

[JD]

^Exactly (EDIT: To Professor Zoom). I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of people who are throwing a fit over this will probably still buy and read the books in the end. I was thinking this over some more and I really think that this point the first few books will be huge, mainly due to all the hype this is getting in both the geek and mainstream media. But, I really think the bigger question is will they be able to sustain whatever numbers the first few issues get.

 

[Myasishchev]

I also don't really buy the idea of red being the color of blood for every single one of the strange and bizarre species that populate the GL Universe.

Thank you! That shit drives me crazy.

The whole dumb thing does violence to the concepts of both emotions and electromagnetism, but the blood thing is probably the worst.

I keep on meaning to do a parody comic called "Malaise of the Microwave Lanterns," but it's not really topical anymore. Would they have great capacity for boredom, or inspire great boredom? Because sometimes it's one, and sometimes it's the other!