Questions about DC's relaunch

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anarky
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Questions about DC's relaunch

Post by anarky »

Just a place to throw out questions about the new status quo:
  • Will Action and Detective be re-numbered at #1?
  • What are the 52 titles?
  • How the hell do they expect to market 52 #1's?
  • What about Grant Morrison's long-term Batman plan? (Not that I personally care, but I'm sure cutting it short will piss off a bunch of fanboys.)
  • Is their "marketing push" going to consist of merely an article in USA Today that the Associated Press picks up?
  • With Jim Lee being at least halfway in charge, will the mostly dull X-Men ripoffs from the Wildstorm Universe be incorporated in?
  • Are the Milestone and other "grandfathered" characters totally out, or totally in?
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Re: Questions about DC's relaunch

Post by jjreason »

*grabs popcorn and waits for answers*

As much as I dislike DC (for my own stupid reasons, leave me the fuck alone), I must admit this is the most interesting "story" about the medium in a long time - a really long time. There is NOT much time left for any major creators to wrap their shit up... is it possible some series might continue in 2 different iterations for awhile eg Detective vol 1 #800 and vol 2 #14 (for example, I have no idea how the numbers would really line up) coming out in the same month?

This sure will be interesting, but there is a HUGE risk here. HUGE, for the industry as a whole, really. I'm proud of DC for at least recognizing the Pink Elephant of Doom sitting on the sofa, unlike Marvel who's "business model" seems to revolve around a constant cycle of character deaths and/or series restarts which revert to the old numbering (which I seriously cannot stand).
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Re: Questions about DC's relaunch

Post by Rollo Tomassi »

JJ has piqued my curiosity with his DC animosity. Spill, Mountie!! We won't judge. Hell, I'm rather perturbed with them myself at the moment.

Now I will try to answer 'nark's questions.

As of right now, longtime stalwart series Action, Detective, Superman, and Batman are ALL getting #1s along with everyone else. I emphatically, categorically disagree with this and I hope something is done in between now and September. The short term buck in sales numbers is not worth torpedoing all that history for a few measly months (or perhaps even a single month) before the books slide back into their regular sales.

We'll get to the speculating soon enough. I've been racking my brain tryng to figure out how and where DC has enough "Properties" to get 52 new titles from.

I think trying to market 52 new 1st issues is asinine and ludicrous. You're essentially marketing against yourself. Even if you win, you lose.

For some unfathomaly confusing reason, Morrison's Batman stuff and Geoff Johns' GL stuff is all still going to "have happened" in the recent past. At least, thats what I've gathered from all the internet rumors. I guess Johns thinks his stuff is too awesome to jettison, but other writers like Dixon, Grant, Waid, etc can go suck it?

We can only speculate at the "promotion" of both this and the Digital push. But I'm guessing its nowhere near where its going to need to be.

Johns has hinted that "plans are afoot" for both the Wildstorm and Milestone Universe characters in the recent past. With 52 slots to fill, one has to assume at least a couple of them are devoted to these characters.
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Re: Questions about DC's relaunch

Post by Rollo Tomassi »

Okay I'll think of as many titles as I can and number them. When I stop, pick up the numbering with your own ideas. I know I'll stop well short of 52. I'll put (?) behind same wild maybe guesses.

1. Detective
2. Action
3. Superman
4. Batman
5. Wonder Woman
6. Flash
7. Green Lantern
8. Justice League
9. Birds of Prey
10. Aquaman
11. Brave and The Bold(?)
12. Blue Beetle(?)
13. Booster Gold(?)
14. Captain Atom (?)
15. Demon(?) Adventure starring Deadman
16. Doom Patrol (?)
17. Firestorm(?)
18. Green lantern Corps and/or Guy Gardner(?)
19. Hawk and Dove(?)
20. Hawkman. Robinson is writing this one. Writing being a subjective term for wiping your ass with a piece of paper and submitting it as a script.
21. Infinity Inc. (?)
22. Justice League International (they announced this one at the end of JL:Gen Lost)
23. Justice Society America. EDIT. This one's been confirmed as well.
24. Legion of SuperHeroes(?)
25. Manhunter(?)
26. Martian Manhunter(?)
27. Outsiders(?)
28. PlasticMan(?)
29. PowerGirl(?)
30. Question(?)
31. Secret Files and Origins (?) They almost need something like this to unravel the dogshit knot they''re gonna create.
32. Suicide Squad (?)
33. Starman(?)
34. Secret Six (?)
35. Teen Titans. EDIT. This one's been confirmed.
36. Zatanna(?)
37. Supergirl(??)
38. Superboy(??)
39. Deathstroke(??)
40. Robin(??)
41. Catwoman(??)
42. Joker(???)
43. Nightwing (???)
44. A Third Green Lantern book
45. A Third Superman book
46. A Third Batman book.
47. A Fourth Batman book We'll just call this one the Batgirl title with Babs.
48. A Fifth Batman book
49. A Sixth Batman book
50. A Seventh Batman book
51. An Eighth Batman book
52. Who's Who

Okay, never mind, I guess there's enough there for 52 books. Oh, and I read there'll be an Adventure Comics starring Deadman, so let me EDIT than into the list somewheres...

Let the culling and replacing begin.
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Re: Questions about DC's relaunch

Post by anarky »

Nightwing and Batgirl have both been confirmed. No one knows who Nightwing is, though.
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Re: Questions about DC's relaunch

Post by Rollo Tomassi »

Well, if they're looking to 'simplify' their continuity, there's only one person it could be.
Making Jason or Tim or Damian or a complete stranger be NW wouldn't be LESS convoluted and not raise more questions than would be worth doing a reboot/retcon/reset for in the first place.
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Re: Questions about DC's relaunch

Post by jjreason »

When I started buying X-Men comics by choice, like looking for them, I was in about grade 6, maybe the summer between 6 & 7. My first "off the rack" issue was in the 160s - it had Carol Danvers burning up on the cover... 164 perhaps. I picked up a few here and there and considered myself a collector of X-Men by the time grade 7 rolled around. When I met some new friends in grade 7 that were comicy, EVERYONE seemed to have X-Men and Amazing - one of my friend's step dad's had a seriously righteous collection that filled an ENTIRE LONG BOX (!!!). He had pretty much full runs of Iron Man & Captain Marvel.

At one point during one of our gatherings I brought up Batman and was immediately chastised - Batman was "DUMB COMICS", purse & simple, regardless of who was writing it at the time. I would go ahead and NOT pick up an issue of DC anything until the second printing of Dark Knight #1 and issue #2 came out together and I had already missed the boat on the first printing of #1. Needless to say, Batman was NOT dumb in this book - and I was a bit perturbed at having been steered away from him so vehemently by those friends.

Now looking back & having bought a few more DC books over the years, I can honestly say I have no affinity for these characters. If DC fails I'll be sad for the hobby, but it will mean next to nothing to me emotionally.
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Re: Questions about DC's relaunch

Post by anarky »

Dunno if you ever made up for it, but, no shit, I would recommend seeking out the entire Grant/Breyfogle run. It started in Detective, jumped to Batman, and finished up in Shadow of the Bat. It helps to read the other title(s), but, aside from a crossover or two, it's not necessary. Easily some of the finest comic work I've ever read. I can't stress that enough, and Diabolical will be around shortly to echo it. :)
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Re: Questions about DC's relaunch

Post by Rollo Tomassi »

HA! I remember when "a whole long box" was impressive. :lol: Those were the days.


I think I would've primarily thought of myself as a "Marvel" guy when I started because it was Transformers and GIJoe to begin with. Then Punisher. Then X-Men, X-Factor, Amazing Spidey, etc and it spread from there. I think 'Acts of Vengeance' really opened the floodgates on me just devouring Marvel.

Whereas DC, I primarily stuck to Batman for the longest time, and got into New Titans because of a Batman crossover. And then Hawk&Dove, but that got cancelled (aka fucked) around Armageddon2001. But the rest of the DC stuff I didn't get into until the Death of Superman. And I generally wasn't that interested in much of what DC was offering. As much as I had that "completist" bug in me, I stopped getting a LOT of DC stuff just because it was frankly, fucking boring. Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash, JLA, Superman, etc etc. So I know where you're coming from.

But also I never really got the whole DC/Marvel artificial rivalry because I realized very early on that most of the writers and artists were bouncing back and forth between the two. Why would John Byrne at DC suck, if Byrne at Marvel was kewl? Plus, in hindsight, I can tell that Stan Lee was doing the whole thing very tongue-in-cheek. Whereas today, guys like Quesada and Geoff Johns are just real dicks about the whole thing. Its like, immature much?

But anyway, back to the topic. I see Grifter is one of the new titles, so I guess the Wildstorm got swallowed by the DCU. It would've been interesting if they decided that the Wildstorm stuff was all "history" that had happened at a specific point in time, like the 80s and 90s. So in the greater DCU timeline, the JSA stuff happened back in WWII, then have like the Charlton Heroes from the 60s and 70s, the Wildstorm in the 80s and 90s, and then the current DCU start around the new millennium (or I guess, now like last week according to the new timeline.)
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Re: Questions about DC's relaunch

Post by vynsane »

jjreason wrote:Now looking back & having bought a few more DC books over the years, I can honestly say I have no affinity for these characters. If DC fails I'll be sad for the hobby, but it will mean next to nothing to me emotionally.
i'm in the same camp, here. i just can't care a bit about any of them for more than a few issues. even when dick grayson is batman (which is apparently the only time when batman really piques my interest, if my desire to collect the entire "prodigal" storyline and my initial and short-lived excitement over the newest 'batman and robin' series are any indication).
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Re: Questions about DC's relaunch

Post by jjreason »

I was going to pull the trigger on the 16 issues of Batman & Robin drawn by Frank Quitely, just for the pictures.

Oddly enough, I was recalling the other day that it was NOT actually the Age of Apocalypse X-Men comics that lured me back into the fold, it was the Knightfall storyline that ran through the Batman books. I'll have to research when Breyfogle & Grant were on to see if any of this is what I have, but I stuck with the bat for a bit there following that run, which I found pretty good (mind you, I hadn't seen any other comics in a long time).
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Re: Questions about DC's relaunch

Post by anarky »

Looks like Breyfogle had a much shorter run on Shadow of the Bat than I recall: 1-5 and 13. Grant was around for 82 issues, so he wrote the Knightfall tie-ins.
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Re: Questions about DC's relaunch

Post by anarky »

One of the 52 #1's is Mr. Terrific!!!!

AWESOME!!!! :roll: Okay, no, really, why didn't they try to give fucking G'nort his own book first? That will be the first one canceled. Unless it's bloody amazing. Then it will be the second one canceled.
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Re: Questions about DC's relaunch

Post by Rollo Tomassi »

Heads up, JJ! Although Quitely did the covers on those B&R issues, he only did the interiors on the first three issues.
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Re: Questions about DC's relaunch

Post by jjreason »

Thanks for that. Would you consider them "worth the read" or no? I had an auction in my sights that was 1-16 for $14.95.
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