Issue 8: Some straight talk about the DC relaunch

So… DC Comics, amirite?

I’m assuming that if you like comics you’ve already heard the news, but we’ll proceed with a brief recap for my dad: two weeks ago, DC announced that, in a bid to bring in new readers, they’ll be relaunching their entire line in September, complete with a new continuity (suck it, Infinite Crisis!) and more than 50 new titles to fill the shelves until they start adding new ones. Yes, they will be adding new ones, so let’s just get one of the biggest complaints out of the way: if you don’t see a character you like in the announced titles, that is absolutely no guarantee they won’t reappear a month or two or however many later.

While there was definitely some genuine enthusiasm about a lot of the titles and creative teams announced last week (like on this site), the most visible strong emotion in the last two weeks has been ridiculous, cartoonish anger, all thanks to the world’s own ACME bullhorn of hyperbolic unhappiness, the internet.

Of course, I’m not saying that you can’t (or shouldn’t) be disappointed with the news from DC. Maybe you’re upset about the loss of Oracle , the seeming absence, or at least temporarily absence, of female characters like Helena Bertinelli, Stephanie Brown, or Cassandra Cain, or even just with a lot of series and storylines you liked no longer being continued. These are fair criticisms, ones I share, and there are probably a lot more that I haven’t mentioned because I left the flash drive with the draft of this post at home and I’m trying to reconstruct it from memory. Also, because I am a dick. However, one thing I will absolutely not tolerate is the idea that people don’t know why DC is doing this.

Listen: the harsh reality is that you can’t go a couple of days on the comics internet without the following topic being broached: despite this being a time when comics properties are valuable like never before – this week, I’m seeing my third comic book movie of the summer and it’s not even summer yet – the reality is that sales numbers for comics are down. Gone are the heady days of the 1990s when everybody had all those extra pouches, presumably so they could hold all that damn money they were making (carrying the weight of all that money also explains their logic-defying physiques). Nowadays, the #1 series in a month might sell somewhere around130,000 copies, which is a number that the industry would have used to line its creators cage in days past.

Despite comic book movies and TV shows being wildly successful, despite local bookstores having entire wall displays of graphic novels relevant to the summer’s comic book movies, single issue sales are struggling in comparison. In the last year, both Marvel and DC have lowered the prices by a dollar for many of their comics and made increasing forays into the world of digital comics (but more on that on Friday). Marvel has inserted some #1 issues of series needing love in the backs of other series in the hopes that readers will check them out, too. Meanwhile, feeling the crunch, DC decided to take major action: a complete new continuity with a lot of new first issues to pick up.

01. ONE IS THE GREATEST NUMBER

Here’s where a big part of my annoyance with some criticisms of the relaunch comes in; I’ve heard people sarcastically commenting that, “Sure, because the only thing keeping people from reading comics was not having a #1 issue to buy.” Then they laugh and laugh and laugh and complain and complain and complain.

Well, of course it seems that way to someone who’s reading the comics already. You look at a great comic like Scott Snyder and Francesco Francavilla’s run on Detective Comics, and you think, Shit, people should be reading this! Putting out a new #1 of the series doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense because that comic is so good the way it is.

Here’s the thing, though: most comics from the Big Two are next to impossible to just give to someone and have them understand it, let alone love it.

Wait, Commissioner Gordon has a son?

He sure does!

And he’s a serial killer?

Well, no, but you see, if you just read this old storyline from…

BZZZZZT!

And you’ve lost them. I love Batman. Countless millions (maybe even billions) of people love Batman. Only a tiny fraction of those actually read the comics. Have you ever wondered why? There’s a wall keeping them from it.

I’ve had people ask me where to start when reading Batman comics. Now, these are people who actually want to enter the world of comics, but shit, where do I start? I’d love to suggest Grant Morrison’s run, but, well, those aren’t exactly welcome for newcomers; I had to spend more time than I’d like to admit reading Wikipedia articles about the previous decade of Bat-comics before I started reading any of those comics, and for someone who just kind of wants to check out Batman because he seems cool or because they like The Dark Knight? That’s effectively an insurmountable barrier.

So where do I go, then? Well, basically every in-continuity Batman comic currently being published is out, because it is either a crazy Morrison Silver Age love-fest or is following one and completely intertwined with it. Most of them don’t even have the Batman, Robin or Batgirl they think of when they hear those names; a lot of people still don’t even know Dick Grayson was ever Nightwing, let alone Batman. I can maybe get away with some graphic novels, like The Dark Knight Returns, The Long Halloween, Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? or Batman: Year One. They’re nice and big, they tell a complete story and they’re generally out of continuity or at least effectively divorced from it. If I’m lucky, they might eventually check out a single issue, though this is exceptionally rare; more often than not, I’ve actually seen them balk at jumping it at number seven hundred-whatever. It’s just too much. They stick to graphic novels and trade paperbacks.

Here’s where the relaunch comes in. In September, I will be able to hand anybody who asks a copy of Batman #1 and have them pretty much understand it all without having to explain what the fuck No Man’s Land was. They will be able to pick up a comic and understand what the hell is going on. That will be wonderful. Frankly, it’s going to be invaluable for getting more of my friends to read single issue comics or comics at all.

02. NO ALARMS AND NO SURPRISES PLEASE

DC has also been pretty open about how, despite a few pretty big changes, things aren’t going to change as much as a lot of people are worrying about. A lot of big events and things will still have happened, and most of the DCU will still be pretty recognizable to existing fans. Kyle Rayner is still a Green Lantern. Tim Drake still discovered Bruce and Dick’s alter-egos. King Shark is still a shark (he’s a shark!). In that respect, you can breathe a little easier.

And, really, a bunch of the creative teams haven’t changed too too much. The continuing Green Lantern titles are basically the same, as are Batman and Robin and Batman: The Dark Knight. Batman and Detective Comics just switched creators, while The Flash is still going to be pretty recognizable. I could go on. The point is: things aren’t all of a sudden so different that existing fans are going to be left out; that would be business suicide, and we all know it. This is just… a company-wide point of easy entry for the people we really wish would read all these great comics we talk about so much, plus a whole bunch of heavy lifting to bring Wildstorm, Vertigo into the DC fold and provide some more non-capes stuff for the kinds of people who don’t (just) want to read about Batman.

Remember Superman 2000? The men behind that pitch talked about how even a character as iconic as Superman needs a reboot now and again to stay relevant to readers’ cultural sensibilities. While that series didn’t end up happening, it ended up becoming All-Star Superman, a series I absolutely have been able to get people to read and prime them for more comics, though again, not the single issues. That’s what the relaunch is, really: just a bigger version of something like Superman 2000, designed to make sure that these characters we know and love remain relevant to more than just we the dedicated. And it’s happening in single issues that can make fans out of readers out of strangers.

03. AMBASSADISTAS AND OTHER FAKE SPANISH

That’s where we come in. I know the relaunch isn’t perfect. There are things that could have been done better, like the Batgirl/Oracle thing. I wish more of my favourite female characters were front and centre and I wish there were more female creators than just Gail Simone writing series as of the relaunch. Of course, Gail’s been pretty vocal about saying that some editors definitely tried to get more women writers, and Kelly Sue DeConnick has come forward as one who was approached. I’m willing to accept that and hope that Stephanie Brown will be back and that more women will be writing for DC soon.

So please, don’t make silly threats like how you’re going to abandon DC’s mainstream comics or DC altogether. First of all: no, you’re not. If you’ve stuck with it this far, you’re probably not going to leave just because there’s another new continuity. I’m going to call that just basic probability.

Second: have you considered how it looks to the people you keep saying should be reading comics? Let’s face it: we comic book nerds already have a bad reputation for being insular, unwelcoming and perpetually cranky. The genuinely good ambassadors for the hobby and the industry are already easily drowned out by people who think that Comic Book Guy is based on a real person (I’ve definitely seen his doppelgangers at conventions). Add in a bunch of all-caps complaints about how THIS IS THE WORST THING EVER WHY WON’T DC MAKE COMICS THE WAY I WANT THEM TO internet primal screams, and I see another visible barrier to DC’s genuine attempt to bring in new readers.

I want to be an ambassador. Shit, it’s a reason I started this site with Brandon. If all I talk about is the parts of comics that are bad, well, it sure as balls makes it look like comics are bad. That could be mean less people who walk into stores like Brandon’s, less people who pick up Batman and maybe a bunch of other comics, by major and minor publishers alike. Ultimately, that’s bad for the industry and bad for me as someone who likes to talk about comics with people.

So I’m going to talk about the DC relaunch comics that I’m excited to read and probably not about the ones that I’m going to skip. I’ll continue to give a critical eye to the industry and the ways things can improve, but I want it to come from a place of love. I want more people to read comics, and pretending everything is ruined forever doesn’t do anything close to accomplishing that. It just makes me look and feel silly and unhappy.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. once warned, “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” I don’t want to be filled with nothing but anger and disappointment, so I won’t pretend to be.

Join me, won’t you?