I can't wait to see 14 year old JC shaking kids down for smokes behind the school.
DC Comics: Rebirth
- Thread starter theenglish
- Start date
Headmaster: "Johnny, this is your third roommate that's turned up dead..."
Maybe he was a cheerleader who got his start killing Vampires.
So, Rich Johnston over at Bleeding Cool has collected some rumors as to what is likely to come in March following the Future State event:
Well, the rumours are hotting up[sic, seriously, Rich, English isn't even my first language and I cringe at that -Kai]. What remains of the New 52, after DC Rebirth, Death Metal and Future State, is being done away with in favour of an Omniverse model. In which characters and comic books are no longer tied to a strict continuity but will play faster and looser with history.
Basically, they're doing a special event in March to make the Omniverse relevant for the continuity-obsessed part of fandom, and then the writers and artists are pretty much free to use and dismiss whatever they please. I'm fine with that approach.
Well, the rumours are hotting up[sic, seriously, Rich, English isn't even my first language and I cringe at that -Kai]. What remains of the New 52, after DC Rebirth, Death Metal and Future State, is being done away with in favour of an Omniverse model. In which characters and comic books are no longer tied to a strict continuity but will play faster and looser with history.
Basically, they're doing a special event in March to make the Omniverse relevant for the continuity-obsessed part of fandom, and then the writers and artists are pretty much free to use and dismiss whatever they please. I'm fine with that approach.
I actually am too, honestly.
Maybe it will allow creators to actually write the stories they want instead of having to work around events, too!
Maybe it will allow creators to actually write the stories they want instead of having to work around events, too!
Fuck yes, that actually sounds great. Line-wide events are the plague. I would SO like to read Superman stories that are not tied into the Batman Who Sucks or Death Metal or whatever other moronic horseshit they come up with next.
Yes, as a big fan of Hawkman (don't laugh!) I figured he's so far off of everybody's radar, nobody cares about him, he'll be immune to any crossover and it will be great!
Then Batman Who Laughs showed up...
Then Batman Who Laughs showed up...
On the one hand, DC's been so shit that trying anything could help. On the other hand, I have absolutely no interest in Reading any comic books that aren't in continuity with each other, so I wouldn't be adding any DC books and will probably drop the last ones I'm reading if there's no longer DC Universe. this rumor would mean the actual end of DC if they do this. the company started so many decades ago will be officially dead if the universe is dead, and that's really fucking pathetic. It would be better to have the new 52 back then to have no universe that all, hopefully if this shit is true it just leads to worst sales and ends up bringing back an actual universe sooner rather than later.
But, it's not like that source is super accurate. It's hard to imagine even DC destroying Itself by eliminating continuity when that's one of the biggest strengths of Marvel and DC, having actual universes while indy shit is just usually one and done. If this does happen, DC is truly dead in every sense of the word, and I hope it goes down hard in that case. Maybe then they'd actually fucking fire Jim Lee andJGeoff Jones and hire new people that aren't shit to bring back a real DC Universe.
Sounds like a good idea to me, I think sometimes they get a little too concerned with trying to tie everything together all the time. I've lost count of how many times I've seen people complaining about a series getting hijacked by an event that had nothing to do with that book.
Yeah, pretty much every word of that is wrong.
I’m mostly in the fandom for Superman (and his direct offshoots), and it’s a pure blessing when I get to read stories that are about Clark, Lois, Jimmy, and Perry, without intrusions from ultra-obscure DC fanwank character #32875, or that are part of some cash-grab crossover event that requires me to buy 20 other comics I don’t care about in order to understand.
Without continuity, I have no reason to care about any character. I don't read indy books, I don't want indy books with DC characters. go read some shit from image if you don't want continuity, this exists because it has continuity, it has no reason to exist without it and it won't do very well if it rejects its biggest, at this point only, strength.
DC's elseworld books were almost always shit, and this is just making every book an elseworld book. The majority of DC readers want a universe, it's just been the quality that's the problem since around the new 52 introduction. It will be hilarious to see the numbers fall if they remove one of DCs biggest draws. Marvel will be able to legitimately declared victory in the comic realm just as they have in every other form of media except animation.
As someone who always liked the DC Universe a bit better than Marvel, this is pathetic but at least if DC is dead it can't get any worse.
Few are fond of "THIS Changes everything!!" multi-title/year events that did exactly what you said (cash grab), but some continuity is important, so you have to expect characters' worlds to mix. This is not the loose Golden Age/early Silver Age, where events or characters meeting was more coincidental (or to boost sales in some cases) than being part of a solid world/reality.
Isolated superhero stories are fine as one shots; DC has succeeded in spectacular fashion with that in the 90s and early 2000s with the magnificent Kingdom Come, the Dini/Ross tabloids (JLA: Secret Origins, JLA: Liberty and Justice, Wonder Woman: Spirit and Truth, Batman: War on Crime, etc.) and other one shots, but that only works because it operates in its own world, whether as an Elsewords type of story, flashback or whatever---but titles set in the main DC universe must be connected to some degree. That's not an "intrusion," but maintaining an established universe/format.
I think there's overreaction in thinking there will be zero connection anymore.
I bet if a writer wants characters to cross over, they will, and broad stroke continuity will always be there. But another writer won't be forcing a story onto another.
I mean, really, when reading Batman this year, what was in those stories that said "This is in the current DC continuity"? Absolutely nothing. 99% of what we're reading now fits the idea of what they want to do. Characters will still cross over into other books. There will still be a feeling of them living in the same universe. They just won't sit down and chat about what's going on in the other book. Which, again, is how they pretty much generally do it now anyways.
If you don't care about the character first, the writers are failing at their jobs BIG TIME and there's no hope for the universe regardless.
I bet if a writer wants characters to cross over, they will, and broad stroke continuity will always be there. But another writer won't be forcing a story onto another.
I mean, really, when reading Batman this year, what was in those stories that said "This is in the current DC continuity"? Absolutely nothing. 99% of what we're reading now fits the idea of what they want to do. Characters will still cross over into other books. There will still be a feeling of them living in the same universe. They just won't sit down and chat about what's going on in the other book. Which, again, is how they pretty much generally do it now anyways.
If you don't care about the character first, the writers are failing at their jobs BIG TIME and there's no hope for the universe regardless.
Characters separate from their universe are nothing. I love a ton of DC characters, like I said I like DC in general more than Marvel when it comes to characters, but this isn't 1938 where every book was separate and just coincidentally had the same publisher. With no continuity, there is literally no reason to ever spend money on a DC comic ever again. Like I said, that's how Indie superhero Comics do it, and Indie superhero Comics are generally shit.
I've no desire to read a Batman book where he's not in the same continuity as the Superman from the Superman book, same with any other DC character. I'm okay with the occasional elseworld story or out of continuity miniseries, but the normal Universe still has to be there. it's the glue that keeps everything together.
I've no desire to read a Batman book where he's not in the same continuity as the Superman from the Superman book, same with any other DC character. I'm okay with the occasional elseworld story or out of continuity miniseries, but the normal Universe still has to be there. it's the glue that keeps everything together.
Wow, you have some seriously strange priorities, continuity is always second to character and story. When I'm reading a Batman or Flash story the thing I focus on most is if I'm getting a good Flash or Batman story, not all of the ways they are connected to other books.
To tight of a continuity tends to do more harm than good, since it limits what a book can do. Just look at how many times a book has been ruined because it was forced to match up to things that happened in another book.
I've been reading the Snyder Batman, Johns Aquaman, and Buccellato Flash, and they have all been great, and there have been no real connections between them.
To tight of a continuity tends to do more harm than good, since it limits what a book can do. Just look at how many times a book has been ruined because it was forced to match up to things that happened in another book.
I've been reading the Snyder Batman, Johns Aquaman, and Buccellato Flash, and they have all been great, and there have been no real connections between them.
well I consider Scott Snyder and Geoff john's to bee the biggest blights on DC Comics since I've been reading them, and the fact they constantly ignore continuity and just retcon to do over the fuck they want is part of the problem. DC Comics had a golden age with great continuity for literally decades, DC has a lot of problems but not a single one is solved by getting rid of continuity. Firing Scott Snyder, Tom King, Jim Lee and Geoff John's would fix 99% of DC's problems immediately.
DCs problem is that its ran by edgelord assholes who've been trying to bring back 90s Image Comics since 2011. Combine that with several writers who are allowed to do literally whatever the fuck they want no matter how bad, and can destroy any other writers book at a whim (Scott Snyder especially loves to do this), and you have DC in the Dismal State it's in. it needs new leaders and the removal from power of a lot of the writers, continuity is literally not a problem in any way shape or form. Except for the fact that the current continuity is shit, but that's the problem of the writers, not the concept of a shared universe. completely dismantling the DC Universe does literally nothing except destroy one of the big two comic companies for no reason.
Good Comics need limits, period. they need the shared framework, writers should never be allowed to do whatever they want. DC's problem is that writers like Snyder and King can literally do whatever they want. Snyder wants to ruin Supergirl? He literally hijacks her book from her writers and does it. continuity is not the problem. Letting assholes like Scott Snyder do whatever he wants is the problem. If they cleaned house, they wouldn't have these issues. But right now it's all just a big pile of crap that acts as a playground for whatever the few big writers want at the expensive of the rest of the writers and the fans in general.
Some of the better Superman comics stories in recent memory have been Tom King's and Robert Venditti's stories in the 100-page giants, which operate independently of whatever foolishness may be going on in DC continuity at the moment. Yeah, they've had superficial connections to the larger DC universe, but only in the broadest and most general sense -- e.g., brief appearances by folks like Batman and Wonder Woman, but not tied to any specific continuity or storyline. They've been "baseline" versions of the characters and their world, and all the better for it.
You really shouldn't have to have a Ph.D. in DC-ology -- all 80+ years and eleventy-million forgettable characters and storylines of it -- to enjoy a fucking Superman comic.
You really shouldn't have to have a Ph.D. in DC-ology -- all 80+ years and eleventy-million forgettable characters and storylines of it -- to enjoy a fucking Superman comic.
The problems can also be solved by limiting the continuity between books, since then one writer won't be able to hijack other writer's series.
I have a feeling the characters will all still exist in all of the books, so we will still be able to get team ups between the different characters, but what happens in one book won't affect another. So if they do another storyline like Death Metal, or the recent Ric Grayson story, the characters' solo books will be able to continue unaffected, while the changes will only effect the book where the change was made.
It looks like Marvel is kind of going this route with a lot of the crossovers being done with one offs or miniseries for the characters who aren't a core part of the series, rather than hijacking the solo books.
Its not the Golden-early Silver Age anymore. Fans were the original fuel for this movement--they were the people wanting sense to those fictional worlds, which was not happening when everything was random, one-offs, and characters never felt like they had a real connection with guests they met a hundred times earlier.
If someone is so Hell bent on finding stories with little to no connection to the DC universe, they have imprints to address those tastes.