NS: Rebirth announcement

[lucean]

DC published an announcement concerning the coming Rebirth event with Geoff Johns explaining their mission and thought-process on it. There also hints with what they will try to re-establish with it and since I thought it was a worth a watch, I also decided to share it here for those who haven't seen it yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JN_r_-OB42M

Now, one thing I must point out that I found hilarious in it. Not only is the person presenting the one who removed the biggest legacy character in DCU history by completely eradicating Wally West as Flash, but in addition when discussing GL: Rebirth Johns makes it clear how important it was for him to have Kyle Rayner remain a core character in Green Lantern mythology yet with Flash: Rebirth Wally West basically again gets ignored in order to focus how important Barry Allen is to everything and everyone.

Comments

[lucean]

I can understand the focus on longtime readers as you want to create a solid base similarly to what Marvel has succeeded in doing with some of their titles. What I find alarming is that the current editorial has strongly signaled that to me that focus means the classic versions of the characters while going out of their way to ignore later popular versions of the character. See King Aquaman from the 90s, which Johns basically mocked during his Aquaman run.

[silverhammerman]

Longtime readers may be stable, but they're also an inevitably shrinking segment of the market. Playing to them is unambitious, and more importantly, shortsighted. It sends the message that DC is more concerned with short term stability than making sure that they actually have readers in 10 years time.

I'm agreed on the issue of DC not really integrating newer and more wildly known versions of the characters in favor of sticking to the "classic" versions. Marvel's MCU synergy gets a lot of flack, but it's good business sense to have the characters in the comics at least somewhat resemble the versions found in the latest movie or TV show.