DC to REBOOT???

[Thestral]

Hmm, so is this New DCU going to be something like what people were (wrongly) saying the Ultimate Universe was intended to be 10+ years ago, a new dimension/reality that's going to be the focus of all the stories?

"See it that way," then - but it's not, unless those people also intend to leverage their announcements as part of a campaign to sell me something in the public square.

That's a red herring - this was an early report on a business announcement by DC, not a violation of any putative "artists rights." Unless DC has suddenly become an artist-owned collective of some kind, the artists had no more control over the release of their material by DC than by BleedingCool.

Sorry, there's just no rational way to reconcile the principles of journalism with the idea that these folks did something somehow wrong. They did their jobs - the shills didn't.

Well, Geoff Johns would be one person who's both artist and businessman in this case. But you make good points and I understand what you're saying. You probably have the right of it I suppose.

 

[TemporalFlux]

But how is that not a reboot? If there is the "old continuity" then this is a "new continuity." Isn't that a reboot? It's new after all.

I guess it just depends on how one looks at the word "reboot". For me, reboot means erasure and not just a restart of the machine. I did not consider every Elseworlds story a reboot; they were just stories that happened in parallel to other continuities. No previous stories were erased or reset by an Elseworlds; the current continuities of the time all still happened.

If the "Earth 2" approach is taken with this, then to me it just means that the stories before September are now taking a back seat to the stories after September. I could see an argument of continuity being booted to the back seat in that scenario, but I don't see it as rebooted.

And as for the 1960's, let's not forget that the original intention was to just ignore the golden age happened. It was a few years after that reboot that Julie Schwartz and Gardner Fox created a parallel earth for the golden age to live on.

 

[Admiral_Young]

The JLI cover does appear to have Dick Grayson's Batman costume design. Especially with the belt buckle.

 

[Professor Zoom]

But how is that not a reboot? If there is the "old continuity" then this is a "new continuity." Isn't that a reboot? It's new after all.

I guess it just depends on how one looks at the word "reboot". For me, reboot means erasure and not just a restart of the machine. I did not consider every Elseworlds story a reboot; they were just stories that happened in parallel to other continuities. No previous stories were erased or reset by an Elseworlds; the current continuities of the time all still happened.

I see what you're saying, though for me, except for Elsewhere--which the whole point was outside continuity, everything more or less happened unless something contradicted it.

I came to comics after Crisis on Infinite Earths, but for the most part the "what happened" happened, except when specially contradicted. For example, there was no Earth 1 or 2, but the stories still happened.

 

[scnj]

Re: The Watchmen crazy idea. God, I hope no.

Agreed. But it wouldn't surprise me.

 

[Admiral_Young]

Alan Moore would probably hate that.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

The DC universe we've known for the past 25 years since Crisis? That's now a parallel reality still hanging out there (just like they did with Earth 2 as the home of the golden age continuity). The main continuity Earth is now going to be this relaunch. We'll still see the old continuity from time to time (it may even get its own set of series in the tradition of All Star Squadron).

The more I think about, the more I suspect that's what DC has in mind, and there are two main reasons for this.

The first is simply structural. DC (as a company) has, over the years, absorbed other companies' characters, like the Fawcett characters (Captain Marvel and his family), the Charlton characters (Blue Beetle, the Question), the Wildstorm characters, and the Milestone characters. Then there are things like Watchmen, with that batch of characters.

None of these characters were ever designed to fit together with one another. And while some things, like the Charlton characters, have been integrated quite well into the DCU, other characters, like the Marvel Family, have struggled to "fit." And then the Wildstorm characters have, for the last fifteen years, been treated as something separate.

If you're building a new universe from scratch, though, and you're thinking through how all the pieces fit together, you can make these things come together organically because now they're all part of the foundation, and you can build a coherent history from that.

(No, I have no idea if Watchmen's characters will be part of the new DCU. But now that I've thought about it, the Minutemen would make for an interesting group of characters in the new DCU's Golden Age.)

The second reason why I think that DC is giving us a new Earth -- or rather, shifting its narrative focus to a new Earth -- is narrative.

Flashpoint, quite frankly, isn't any sort of finale for the DCU as we know it. The concept is entirely peripheral to the DCU as it stands today -- it's basically a glorified Elseworlds where everything that could go wrong has gone wrong, and even though many of the characters have the same names, they're not the people that long-time readers know or have been following.

If Flashpoint isn't a continuation from the current DCU, the new DCU doesn't look like any sort of continuation from Flashpoint. (That is, unless the Flash flies the Pandorica into the heart of an exploding TARDIS, in which case I take it all back.) And yes, I'm aware of Barry's "But this is all real" conversation with Batman in issue #2, but let's face facts -- Barry's an idiot, and what he does to himself at the end of the issue more than proves that.

So I think it's a different Earth entirely.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Eh, Earth is Earth.

 

[sojourner]

Why does someone think it's going to be a Dr.Solar riff (they are similar) but what in particular leads you to that. (Can't recall the poster)

I made the Solar comment. It comes from the paragraph accompanying the cover image for Captain Atom. If you replace Atom's name with Solar's, it could easily have been written by Valiant comics in the 90's.

 

[TemporalFlux]

The more I think about, the more I suspect that's what DC has in mind, and there are two main reasons for this...

The first is simply structural...

The second reason why I think that DC is giving us a new Earth -- or rather, shifting its narrative focus to a new Earth -- is narrative.

What led me to start thinking in the Earth 2 direction was the new information from JMS. JMS notes that the relaunch is something Dan Didio has wanted for a long time; Geoff Johns is not mentioned. So how would Johns fit in the equation?

I would speculate that Didio obtained Diane Nelson's approval on the relaunch, and then he handed it to Geoff Johns and said, "Make it work." That is Johns' expertise; he makes things work. Johns is also pretty clearly a Crisis / pre-Crisis era fan. Johns revived the golden age Justice Society and made them relevant again. Johns brought back Hal Jordan. Johns brought back Barry Allen. Johns built Blackest Night around a Crisis era Alan Moore story. Johns revisited the Crisis itself and tied up the one glaring loose end.

So if you're a pre-Crisis fan, what do you do? I would take the opportunity to again dial things back to a pre-Crisis idea - Earth 2.

Anyway, it's all just speculation on my part; but it did also cause me to think about how the modern DC continuity already is a kind of Earth 2 when you think about it. As presented pre-Crisis, the golden age Earth 2 featured a world where Batman married Catwoman and had a daughter who became Huntress; Superman married Lois Lane; legacy heroes had begun to take up the mantles of existing, retired or dead heroes; and Batman himself was in fact dead.

You can find analogs to many of the Earth 2 themes in the modern DCU; the history has organically built upon itself to a point where the core, foundation concepts are barely there anymore. It reminds me of a comment I noticed on a forum a few weeks ago; someone was pointing out that it's been a year or two since Clark Kent even set foot in the Daily Planet or acted like he had a job. So aside from the occasional chat with Ma Kent, how much of Clark is really being presented?

When Didio, JMS, etc. talk about making the DCU more relatable, I think that part of that is considering the non-regular reader who picks up the book and says, "Hey, where's Clark Kent?" It's a commonly know part of the mythos that just hasn't been in the stories for awhile, and that's true of many things DC has been doing.

So we'll see what the actual changes are and how DC is handling them, but my train of speculative thought leads me in the Earth 2 direction. It just fits.

 

[Admiral_Young]

I suspect that Johns had a great deal of input in this decision since he's a known fan of the Silver Age. I'd not be surprised to learn later on if he, Lee, and DiDio have been working on this for a while, especially he and DiDio the later of which is also a big Silver Age fan.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

What would be marvelous, and won't happen, would be for the made-up geography of DC Earth to vanish in a puff of smoke and have Superman wake up in New York, etc.

It's out of the question, of course, almost entirely because of the Goddamned Batman. Gotham is the only location in the DC Universe that's really a distinctive setting, and a character in its own right. It just couldn't be mapped onto an existing real world city.

 

[Admiral_Young]

^ That is something that I've played around with. I know Metropolis and Gotham were meant to be based and Upper and Lower Manhattan. I was toying around with a fan fic idea of putting the DC Universe in our world and I like the idea of Gotham being Chicago thanks to the Nolan films.

 

[JD]

I swear years ago I heard someone say that Gotham was based on Chicago and Metropolis was New York, but I've never found anything about it online and I don't remember where I heard it.

 

[sojourner]

For some reason I always liked the idea of Boston as Gotham.

 

[Thestral]

Boston's a new one on me. I could see Chicago for sure. Maybe, I dunno, Baltimore?

 

[Nerys Myk]

Both were rather generic Big Cities for decades. Though early on Metropolis was similar to Cleveland and Toronto because those were the cities Siegel and Shuster new. I assume it became more NYC like when Superman's production moved there.

Making Gothm dark and gothic and Metropolis bright and futuristic is a more recent twist. For years they looked pretty much the same. Of course in those days Batman operated in daylight and was a fully deputised lawman who showed up ribbon cuttings and elemetary schools.

 

[Snaploud]

Detroit could certainly use a Batman.

 

[Jetfire]

I always thought Gotham was like NY City and Metropolis was like DC.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Why DC?