So let's get this straight. DC is making a fresh, young, accessible DC Universe...where Batman has already gone through four Robins, Superboy has already been cloned from Superman, and the entire War of Light has already happened because God forbid Geoff Johns has to erase even a single one of his stories from continuity. Oh, and Hal, Guy, John and Kyle are all Green Lanterns already in this new, more accessible DC. And "The Killing Joke" is in continuity, but Batgirl isn't Oracle.
This isn't even worth making fun of...except for the blurb for Justice League Dark, which is the perfect parody of a crazed talentless manchild fanboy's idea of what the Justice League "should be like" that somehow got made into an actual comic. This isn't like "Crisis on Infinite Earths", where they genuinely tried to start the DC universe over as a single coherent construct and got hamstrung by some lingering pre-reboot continuity. This isn't even like "Infinite Crisis", where they tried to undo "Crisis on Infinite Earths" and go back to the convoluted continuity because they liked it better. This is just plain inept. Seriously, all the analogies I can think of for this reboot, I can't say, because I think that jokes about the mentally challenged are mean-spirited and tasteless.
The only good thing I can say is coming out of this is that they're finally folding the Wildstorm universe into the DC Universe the way they should have six years ago. (And I haven't heard anything about the Authority, which is also good. The Authority are a good stand-alone team, but they've always fit awkwardly at best into a shared fictional universe, and that would only get worse if they had to rub shoulders with Superman and Batman.) But really, once you've decided to bring back Batman, Inc. in a year rather than piss off Grant Morrison, why even bother calling it a reboot? Why not just say, "Fuck continuity, we're changing the backstory whenever we feel like it and you can just fucking cope!"
Oh, right. Because the only reason fans stick around for the bad stories is to find out what effect they'll have on the vast, overcomplicated metastory. My bad.
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Well, all that Johns did on Superman is getting wiped out after all, which amuses me. Actually, I'd rather see his GL get wiped out honestly, but I know better. As for JLD (or whatever), I'm hoping that Peter Milligan produces something better than the copy. Actually, I haven't even read the copy, but I'll take your word for it.
Paul Cornell is writing the new version of The Authority. Martian Manhunter is on the team...
I don't think the problem with Crisis was lingering continuity as much as everyone subsequently going "Hey, I want to reboot something too!" So as Dan Jurgens discovered,a post-Crisis Hawkman/Superman team up from 18 months earlier was suddenly out of continuity because Hawkman had been rebooted.
If you're going to reboot, you have to reboot everything. From scratch, no take-backs. If you've got an interconnected universe with a metastory, you don't have a choice. It's either all or nothing. (Or nobody gets to have a damn clue what is in continuity or not.)
A total reboot is the only possible option. Agreed. And the sad thing is, ten minutes of thought reveals SO many ways to make it so that the first year isn't just a bunch of meet-and-greets between the characters.
What they really need to do then, as well, is a great big finale to the current universe. Not just "Whatever Happened To..." stories, but actual finishes to the current stories.
Of course, if I ran DC, it'd be better... ;-)
I hear that if Justice League Dark is a success, DC will follow it up with Justice League w/ Almonds, Justice League Peanut Butter and Justice League Mini Mocha Munchables.
Seriously, I think this is just a smokescreen. I really believe that for the folks running Marvel & DC in 2011, publishing comics is no longer their primary concern. They just use our nostalgia-fueled expectations to lead us around by the nose through one stupid idea after another, and because WE care about the comics first and foremost, we keep waiting for the proof that this will all matter somehow. Meanwhile what they want to do is get us roped into the next TV show or video game or animated straight-to-video feature or movie.
@LurkerWithout: But crucially, that's being called 'Stormwatch', and it sounds like they're rewinding it back to before they set themselves up as judge, jury and executioner over entire planets.
@Carl Walker: "John Constantine, Deadman, Shade the Changing Man and Madame Xanadu are Justice League Dark, a band of supernatural heroes united to stop the dark things the rest of the DCU does not see in JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK #1, by Peter Milligan and artist Mikel Janin."
It's perfect fanboy lunacy: "I'm sick of the Justice League always being the same old superheroes that everybody wants to see! It should totally be all my favorite Vertigo characters, teamed up in a totally inexplicable fashion! And they're dark, too! Way darker than that lame Superman and even darker than Batman! In fact, I think I'll call it 'Justice League Dark'! And they fight the dark things, the things the Justice League doesn't even see because they're so...dark, yeah!"
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