NS DC Comics to Relaunch Everything with #1s Again

[thatnickguy]

All right, cash in everyone. Who had "5 years until DC reboots again" in the betting pool?

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2016/01/22/dc-comics-to-relaunch-everything-with-1s-again-this-summer-with-a-filmtv-bent/

Now, mind you, this is being reported by Bleeding Cool and it hasn't been officially announced, so take the news with a grain of salt.

Bleeding Cool has run a number of stories about upcoming changes expected after the publication of the issue 52s of the remaining New 52 launch titles from five years ago.

And it seems like it's time to do the New 52 Relaunch all over again, in June.

Bleeding Cool broke the story on a spate of name change relaunches and certain books going bi-weekly at DC Comics this summer. But it seems this is only a part of it.

I understand that a top down change has filtered through the publisher which will see another relaunch for DC Comics with everything getting a new #1 in June - those that survive that is.

And the new line even more dominated with Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and Harley Quinn/Suicide Squad-related titles.

Anything tying in with a film and/or TV show like Flash, Green Arrow will be okay, anything that's not is less so. I haven't heard about Green Lantern...

But yes, this will mean another big issue 1 relaunch. Could this be All-New All-Different A-Bit-Like-The-TV-Shows DC Comics?

Comments

[locuatico]

okay, this would be the first "reasonable" explanation why no new Supergirl ongoing has been greenlighted yet: they were waiting for the relaunch... granted, you could still have done a 6-issue mini-series to fit the release of the tv show but what do i know...
But would this mean WW will have a new creative team?

[stubbleupdate]

granted, you could still have done a 6-issue mini-series to fit the release of the tv show but what do i know...

Sterling Gates is doing a digital first Supergirl spin off comic

[alicemacher]

Geez, DC. Why don't you just make every issue of every title "#1" from now on? Every month, a new #1 issue, with "REBOOT" on the cover for good measure.

Also, DC marketing staff should change their standard "something happens that changes the DCU/Character X's life forever!" teaser to "changes the DCU/Character X's life for one month!"

[locuatico]

Not even complete stories, mind you. they keep on being 1/6 of a complete story priced as a full one, and next month, the entire plotline is dropped.

[thatnickguy]

I was under the impression that was already their marketing strategy for years.

[fiddlingfrog.livejournal.com]

Any bets as to how they'll work the number fifty-two into this reboot? Weekly countdown series? Number of titles being published? Hidden in the artwork? We're now following Earth-52?

[silverhammerman]

The whole arbitrary 52 thing is apparently one of the things which has hurt DC quite a bit over the past few years. 52 was too many titles to begin with, and rounding out the numbers meant that DC kept putting out a bunch of books (Blackhawks, Green Team, etc.) which few people were interested in reading and got cancelled and replaced in short order with more books no one wanted to read.

[cyberghostface]

Guess Marvel's not alone in derailing the comics in favor of the media properties.

I am genuinely curious as to whether or not making the comics similar to the movies has any change in sales. Because IMO just making comics accessible to new readers would be enough.

[locuatico]

well, if they make them like the movies and tv shows, they WOULD be more accesible to new readers, me think.

[lego_joker]

Yup. Superheroes are now big business and an accepted part of the cultural landscape.

Superhero comics, on the other hand, have pretty much been turned into a glorified PR wing.

[tugrul]

I'll believe it when I see it.

[thatnickguy]

Same. As I said: it's Bleeding Cool. They've been wrong before.

[captainbellman]

"HAWKMAN #1: WHO CARES"

[thatnickguy]

Who cares? HAWK CARES!

That ones for free, DC. You can have it.

[beyondthefringe]

Oh for fuck's sake.
When DC first rebooted with the new 52, I gave them a chance and tried a lot of the new titles. I then began to winnow them down as interest and budget demanded. Sometimes they helped me out by cancelling things I liked, sometimes they hurt themselves by throwing multiple weekly series at me... but I went from many DC titles to a mere handful. I dropped a few more after Convergence because it seemed like an opportune time. It's at the point where I just don't feel any connection with the modern DC universe. Five years later, and it still doesn't feel like "the" DC universe, just a series of events.

If they cancel and restart everything again, it'll just make me strongly consider what's still worth buying.

Say what you will about Marvel, but even after the Secret Wars, it still feels like the same Marvel universe I've always known to me, just with the element of change and growth added in. I can still chart a line from the characters I read in the '80s and '90s to today.

[astrakhan42]

The way I look at it is: one of Marvel's recent dumb retcons, that Magneto isn't the father of Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, really doesn't change anything about the past fifty years of stories. Pietro still had a kid with Crystal and joined X-Factor. Wanda still married the Vision and screwed around with reality. All of this happened with them still believing that they were Magneto's kids, so it's not all that jarring to see references to that in older stories.

Compare that with DC's Zombie Stargirl, who gets that nickname from me because her entire reason for existing was stripped away with the deletion of the JSA. Whatever Courtney is now, she's not the character from Stars and STRIPE. Her stepfather isn't a time-displaced WW2 hero and the Starman legacy is gone.

[lucean]

If the rumor proves to be correct, I'm not necessarily going to be that surprised by it. The Batbooks are going to have a major creative shift, the current Superman and WW creative doesn't seem to have a decided direction, JLA and GL kind of just are there and Flash has become so inconsequental that it is painful.

As for the media overbleed, I am not quite certain why there always seems to be such a panic over it, especially since it doesn't really gel in anyway with the current books. For example, Arrow only really works because there is no Batman which also allows them to shamelessly steal from Batman.

[lb_lee]

Blah. I quit DC with the last reboot. Honestly, this isn't making me feel any worse about leaving the Big Two over the course of the years. :\ Seriously, I expect a little retconning or rebooting with any long-running series, but my tolerance for them has gone down over the years.

[informationgeek]

So it's a relaunch and not a reboot? Well it's not as bad as Marvel so I don't mind the relaunching of a few books (frankly, as some people here have put it, some books should have started over again with 1 considering how drastically different they turned out like with Batgirl)

Anyhow, here's hoping whatever relaunch there is, it means a new creative team for Flash (there's a book that could stand to be more like the show) and Wonder Woman.

[owlbrigade1]

Eh, screw it. I'm down to only one DC comic anyway, and it is on the brink of cancellation due to people not realizing how damn awesome and funny it is. I'm pretty certain it'll be gone soon, dammit, and I don't see anything in DC's movie line up that is going to draw me back. I do hope they get enough new readers from the movies though, so that the company goes on just fine, and maybe in a decade or two the comics will cycle back to stuff I might read. I'm just not in DC's target audience and I'm okay with that, more or less.

[philippos42]

Which book?

[an_idol_mind]

Remember when DC was promoting the New 52 and one of their big things was, "Since every character starts out at #1, there's a chance for them to all be popular without being overshadowed by Batman, Superman, et al."? How did that turn out?

[q99]

I think it suffered when all the minor characters were off in their own corners, not interacting with big stuff and/or rapidly shoved aside...

[janegray]

As long as they leave Bombshells alone. I just discovered the series!

[q99]

I assume this is more akin to Marvel Now than a reboot.

[philippos42]

If this is true, they're idiots.

[owlbrigade1]

Didio-ts.

[laughing_tree]

Even if we assume this is true, all that the rumor site says is that it will be a relaunch, not a reboot. There's no reason yet to believe the continuity will be reset again (though part of me thinks a reboot might be a good thing? They really did not handle it well the last time around, and I wonder if it's best to just give up building atop such unsteady foundations, y'know?)

I also don't see the big deal about renumbering. It's just a number! Doesn't TIME magazine start a new volume every single year? TV seasons are the same way, if you think about it.

What does sound bad about the whole thing is the focus on tying into TV. Tying in isn't inherently bad. As others have said, that's what gave us such staples as Harley Quinn and even the Daily Planet. But forced tying in, driven not by creative needs but by orders from management... that has the feel of editorial straitjacketing.

Also, most of the DC comics I'm buying is the DCYou stuff, which blatantly doesn't tie into anything, and I fear there will be no place for them and their like. If all this is true.

[laughing_tree]

Though speaking of the DCYou, it's stuff like that that makes it hard for me to blame the Big Two too much for bad directions. The DCYou is some of the most high-quality, risk-taking and genuinely original material the company's put out in A LONG TIME. And, as I understand it, most of it selling downright awfully. Meanwhile, those uninspired "event" books dominate the charts every time they come out. Apparently, CIVIL WAR is Marvel's top evergreen in trade sales.

As some internet commentator said, it goes to show that we fans have the industry we deserve.

[alschroeder3]

It's like DC is getting more and more addicted to rebooting. After Crisis, they tried it and liked it, but thought they could quit at any time. Then there came the Crisis in Time, and Infinite Crisis, and Flashpoint, and now....

DC. It's time for an Intervention. We love your characters, but this rebooting thing is just ruining your line of comics.

It just leaves the reader feeling cheated and wondering why they collected the previous version.

And considering what just happened to Marvel, I'll be very interested to see if Marvel similarly gets more and more addicted to Rebooting...

[silverhammerman]

Not surprising, Sketchd ran a good article on DC's troubles a couple of weeks ago and this seems like a very DC "solution". Sure this might net DC another temporary sales boost, but unless they change their approach and honestly, their management, they'll just wind up in this situation again in a few years.

I'd kinda like to see the DCYou ideas applied more broadly and aggressively, because while it was a flop, the concept of more freedom and lighter continuity still strikes me as being sound. The problem was just that a book like Black Canary, no matter how good it is, isn't going to bring in new/casual fans the way a good Wonder Woman book could.

Really though, I'd just like to see DC do some common sense stuff. Tighten up the publishing slate and stop putting out a bunch of go nowhere titles, bring in new creators and get rid of some of the older 90's holdovers, and synergize things in way that actually makes sense (Oh hello, concept of a Teen Titans book which actually resembles the TV version which millions of people grew up watching).

But now I'm talking about DC being run like a competent business, and that's just craziness.

[stubbleupdate]

What makes a book a "go nowhere title"?

[minervasolo]

I'm waiting for the reboot that brings back the continuity I loved. If the pace of change keeps picking up, that should be before the decade is out!