Or at least, never Batman's Robin...

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2012/07/24/ ... red-robin/

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2012/09/16/ ... -titans-1/

What. The. Fuck? Can any of you who follow comics explain...any of this? How this shit makes sense? At all? I know DC has taken a swan dive off the deep end with all their reboot bullshit, but saying Tim Drake was never Robin? Da fuck?

Looks like the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.

Since its a reboot they can change whatever history they want, as long as its still consistent. Unfortunately that doesn't seem to have been the case because they contradict themselves already.

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Master : Do you know who your parents are?
Hero : Aren’t I an orphan?
Master : No. <Insert details here>. BTW, your parents were killed by the Master of the girl you like. So you can’t marry her now.
Hero : Noooo
I describe this as soap opera with Chinese characteristics and I love it.

Marvel did the same thing early in their Ultimate line. They ended up ignoring a few of the things that contradicted what they wanted to do later on. The main one being the young version of the FF they went with even though they'd had an Ultimate Team-up with Spiderman where the team was essentially like they were in the 616 universe. The issue also included a goofy version of the Skrulls that were like the original versions. That was before the Chittari were also called Skrulls and the later appearance of a different version of Skrulls in the FF book. At least they seem to be fixing some of the crap that was F'd up with the Ultimates and Thor. They seem to be sticking with the humans created mutants stuff though.

As for DC, eventually some writer will ignore the changes they find to be bullshit. It's essentially how the Post Crisis reboot of Superman eventually brought back just about everything from the Silver Age. So maybe Tim Drake will be Batman's Robin at some point. It might be a while though. I think the constant dicking round with the chracters is why a lot readers start following particular writers and then bailing on a book when a new writer comes in and starts shit canning or ignoring what people had previously liked about the book. Add in all the mega crossovers that the main books are required to go along with and it happens even more. Wonder Woman was a good example of this, especially with craptacular crossovers like "Amazons Attack", but that wasn't the only one.

Honestly, I wanted to use this thing to go into a broader discussion of the reboot as a whole and if its creating an interesting new universe. I think a year, roughly, is enough time to see if its working or not.

Or should we wait even longer before judging.

My take so far? Some interesting titles have come out of it, but it has not been worth the cost. And of those good titles, which ones HAD to be told in this rebooted universe? By my count, none, really. The ones that use the "New Universe" the most tend to suck the most from what I've seen.

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ISARMA: Daikaiju Coordinator: Just Add Radiation
Justice League- Molly Hayes: Respect Hats or Freakin' Else!
Browncoat
Supernatural Taisen - "[This Story] is essentially "Wouldn't it be awesome if this happened?" Followed by explosions."

Reviewing movies is a lot like Paleontology: The Evidence is there...but no one seems to agree upon it.

"God! Are you so bored that you enjoy seeing us humans suffer?! Why can't you let this poor man live happily with his son! What kind of God are you, crushing us like ants?!" - Kyoami, Ran

To me, the best thing to come out of DC comics was Gail Simone's Secret Six.

I think that pretty much sums up what I think of the New 52.

Did the Secret Six continue after the reboot? That was one of the more enjoyable books before the reboot. Currently I've used the reboot as more of an opportunity to not read as many comics and so far I haven't been hearing anything that makes me want to change my mind.

No. Deadshot and King Shark got shunted over to the new Suicide Squad series, but from what I've read it hasn't been anywhere near as good.

Secret Six was effectively replaced with a version of the Suicide Squad. It has King Shark (who is now a Hammerhead for some reason) and Deadshot in it, as well as Harley Quinn (who was in the sixth slot for a while when they fought the Birds of Prey) in a truly . . . Ya know, I'd call it "Fanservice portrayal" but it just comes off as skeevier than that. She's also robbed of any impetus in her own origin.

And Amanda Waller was made a young, thin woman. At least she kept her ethnicity.

It overall is a downturn from Secret Six. It also lacks the black comedy of that title.

A lot of the Nu lacks fun, humor or hope in general.

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ISARMA: Daikaiju Coordinator: Just Add Radiation
Justice League- Molly Hayes: Respect Hats or Freakin' Else!
Browncoat
Supernatural Taisen - "[This Story] is essentially "Wouldn't it be awesome if this happened?" Followed by explosions."

Reviewing movies is a lot like Paleontology: The Evidence is there...but no one seems to agree upon it.

"God! Are you so bored that you enjoy seeing us humans suffer?! Why can't you let this poor man live happily with his son! What kind of God are you, crushing us like ants?!" - Kyoami, Ran

The reboot has had good points (the continual of the Green Lantern epic, Johns' Aquaman, Azarello's Wonder Woman), but it's been terribly uneven elsewhere. From a general standpoint, DC's refusal to break cleanly with the pre-reboot stories and mythology has caused a repeat of the problems that plague the DCU following COIE.

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"...When you're down and out, and everybody thinks you're finished, that's the time to stand up on your two feet and shout, 'WHO DO YOU HAVE TO F*** TO GET A BREAK IN THIS TOWN?!"

-- Max Bialystock, The Producers: The Musical --

It would have been nice to actually have Batman start fresh and put like a 4 or 5 year moratorium on Robin so that you could really explore the character and his darkness and severe issues.
Also to establish why he is so feared by both the criminals and other heroes instead of just "Oh well FM wrote it that way in TDKR so that's how it is.".

I am given to understand that the Themyscirans are now slave-keeping feminazis who rape and then murder the crews of ships passing near their island, despite which they managed to (not deliberately) raise Diana in ignorance of their slave keeping practices and with broadly the same morals as her pre-reboot self.

Is this really a good point? Because if so I'd rather not hear about the bad ones.

That's not entirely accurate.

There's no slave keeping. They do, however, rape and murder to reproduce their 'species' as it were. The Wonder Woman reboot has basically been a supernatural horror book rather than a pure superhero book, more aligned with Greek mythology than prior versions. This has worked for the better, and for the worse.

The other really good title for me has been Demon Knights which is pretty much "The D&D Party you wish you always had". It's violent and bloody, but there's an element of fun underlying the entire thing.

For a bad example, there's Teen Titans. Which has a villain who everyone in story treats like a major scheemer and planner when it's obvious to the reader that the villain is simply incompetent. We're talking Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged Paradox or Doctor Dinosaur level incompetent. The author tried to make have the villain do things in a misleading way and informing the heroes of it, but both the original plan and his later revelations are so utterly moronic that he can't be taken seriously. Especially since his overall motivation pretty much is Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged Paradox: to "Save the Future". He uses that justification for every plan he reveals is the "Real" plan and it just gets tedious.

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ISARMA: Daikaiju Coordinator: Just Add Radiation
Justice League- Molly Hayes: Respect Hats or Freakin' Else!
Browncoat
Supernatural Taisen - "[This Story] is essentially "Wouldn't it be awesome if this happened?" Followed by explosions."

Reviewing movies is a lot like Paleontology: The Evidence is there...but no one seems to agree upon it.

"God! Are you so bored that you enjoy seeing us humans suffer?! Why can't you let this poor man live happily with his son! What kind of God are you, crushing us like ants?!" - Kyoami, Ran

Majin's pretty much summed it up.

Also keep in mind that I haven't read Diana since Rucka's run was cut short due to the Infinite Crisis clusterfuck. Not even Simone was enough to bring me back. Azzarello doesn't write typical spandex stories, which is why I think I'm enjoying his take -- more or less anyway. I'm also very keen on seeing how he handles...

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"...When you're down and out, and everybody thinks you're finished, that's the time to stand up on your two feet and shout, 'WHO DO YOU HAVE TO F*** TO GET A BREAK IN THIS TOWN?!"

-- Max Bialystock, The Producers: The Musical --

That still pisses me off.



I liked Simone's WW too. Unfortunately Wonder Woman is one of those books that has been screwed a lot by the cross overs completely disrupting what the regular writer had been doing with the characters.

Yeah, especially given "Land of the Dead" had just set up a very interesting new status quo with Ares as the God of both War and the Underworld. So much potential that got screwed over.

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"...When you're down and out, and everybody thinks you're finished, that's the time to stand up on your two feet and shout, 'WHO DO YOU HAVE TO F*** TO GET A BREAK IN THIS TOWN?!"

-- Max Bialystock, The Producers: The Musical --

I think Linkara sums it up nicely:



As for New 52 in general, I'm not following it much because really, fuck them. But Havok sums up my feelings well:


If it's a reboot, make it a fucking reboot. Instead you've got Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake and Damien Wayne all running around...but Batman only started out five years ago? And all that shit with him dying and making Batman into a franchise also happened within five years? Jesus Christ. Is Jason Todd no longer Batman's Robin now? Did it just go straight from Dick to Damien?

Gah. If you're going to pull that renumber all issues to #1 crap (oh and keep Action Comics from hitting #1000 for your publicity stunt, assholes) make it a true reboot. Not this half-assed shit. DC is dead to me.

Just like Marvel until they retcon One More Day out of existing and get MJ and Pete married again. Fucking Quesada.

Since the reboot I am enjoying the new Green Lantern related books, since they seem to be mostly continuing the storylines that made them great. I am also enjoying Legion of superheroes for the same reason, although the other legion book, Legion Lost doesn't seem as good.

Wonder Woman is ok, but its somewhat early yet. JLA and JLI seems reasonable. The new Amethyst book, Sword of Sorcery looks promising as well with issue #0 coming out. It reminds me of Crossgen's Mystic, so I am keeping an eye on that as well.

---

Master : Do you know who your parents are?
Hero : Aren’t I an orphan?
Master : No. <Insert details here>. BTW, your parents were killed by the Master of the girl you like. So you can’t marry her now.
Hero : Noooo
I describe this as soap opera with Chinese characteristics and I love it.

Oh, it gets better. The Batgirl situation is even more hilariously fucked up when that is brought up, because they keep "insisting" via obvious neglect that there has only been 'one' and that it was always meant to be "Barbara". It's so insistent that it's insulting--and I normally like the stuff from the writer they have on it, but the insistence on the change within the text is so forced that it's off-putting. That it appears to make Barbara a lot less intelligent, even beyond being 'rusty' makes it just worse. The only conclusion I can reach is that it is being done intentionally as a subtle protest.

But fans of "Batgirls who aren't Barbra" have a history now of being screwed, mocked and left forgotten in a ditch.

---

ISARMA: Daikaiju Coordinator: Just Add Radiation
Justice League- Molly Hayes: Respect Hats or Freakin' Else!
Browncoat
Supernatural Taisen - "[This Story] is essentially "Wouldn't it be awesome if this happened?" Followed by explosions."

Reviewing movies is a lot like Paleontology: The Evidence is there...but no one seems to agree upon it.

"God! Are you so bored that you enjoy seeing us humans suffer?! Why can't you let this poor man live happily with his son! What kind of God are you, crushing us like ants?!" - Kyoami, Ran

Agreed. But to play devil's advocate, it would have been financial suicide to completely reboot and ignore the GL books. All the fans that have come in during the last 8 years would have mutinied.

I'm not entirely happy about this mix-and-match preferred continuity either because, again, this refusal to do a clean break caused so many problems after 1985 (ex. Hawkman).



You know, Steve made a valid observation a couple of years back in a similar discussion. I can't remember which thread, but it was about Jeph Loeb's introduction to the collected edition Superman/Batman: Supergirl. The introduction showed that the return of Kara Zor-El to the post-1985 DCU had been partly due to Didio's campaigning. Loeb's writing depicted Didio as someone intolerant of the legacy aspect of DC's characters and focused on bringing everything back to a 'one, true' DC.

And it shows as Didio's tenure at DC over the last decade has seen so many legacy characters pushed off to the side or derailed while the 'one, true' version of the character has returned. Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brown aren't the only casualties as we also have Connor Hawke, Kyle Rayner, and Wally West.

The treatment of Wally especially pisses me off. Smart move, that, to alienate a fanbase of 20 years who grew up with Wally as the Fastest Man Alive. If Manapul wasn't kicking ass with his own take on The Flash, I'd be boycotting it.

Kyle is really the only one to make it out of this with some degree of success.

---

"...When you're down and out, and everybody thinks you're finished, that's the time to stand up on your two feet and shout, 'WHO DO YOU HAVE TO F*** TO GET A BREAK IN THIS TOWN?!"

-- Max Bialystock, The Producers: The Musical --

I'm with you there. I think the only legacy hero to survive the shift was Jaime Reyes. If his book wasn't a poor man's Guyver clone, drained of most of its comedic value, spending the majority of its run removing or alienating the beloved supporting cast, with the only truly cathartic moment coming in a year after the series began, this would make me at least somewhat happy.

---

ISARMA: Daikaiju Coordinator: Just Add Radiation
Justice League- Molly Hayes: Respect Hats or Freakin' Else!
Browncoat
Supernatural Taisen - "[This Story] is essentially "Wouldn't it be awesome if this happened?" Followed by explosions."

Reviewing movies is a lot like Paleontology: The Evidence is there...but no one seems to agree upon it.

"God! Are you so bored that you enjoy seeing us humans suffer?! Why can't you let this poor man live happily with his son! What kind of God are you, crushing us like ants?!" - Kyoami, Ran

I was half expecting Jaime to perish in the reboot and Ted Kord to be brought back. I'm glad he wasn't, though yeah his new status qio hasn't made me happy.

---

"...When you're down and out, and everybody thinks you're finished, that's the time to stand up on your two feet and shout, 'WHO DO YOU HAVE TO F*** TO GET A BREAK IN THIS TOWN?!"

-- Max Bialystock, The Producers: The Musical --

Can't make an omelette etc etc...

But in all seriousness, with things like the GL books you probably could keep it...mostly. I mean, it's a whole Corps that existed long before people on Earth started wearing spandex in the name of JUSTICE. So you could keep it...though you'd have to snip out the parts where Earth's GLs were (I'm sure) oh-so-very vital to everything. Because you know, Hal Jordan.

Which would of course upset the "Greatest Lantern EVAR" fanboys but fuck them anyway. Make it Abin Sur who did all that shit. So when he dies and some puny hew-mon gets his ring it's even more of a shock and "oh shit how can I live up to this" for Jordan.

And yeah, I like John Stewart (well TBH I'd ditch Jordan for him but maybe that's just JL/JLU influencing me) and Kyle, but honestly. Why are there so fucking many Earthling GLs anyway? They could totally ditch that. But no, can't.

But the reboot was probably doomed to suck anyway. With all those characters and shit, who was going to wait ten years or more for Tim Drake to show up? Even if they had the balls for a straight reset button, they'd just rush shit anyway to bring back all the characters and stuff. IIRC that was a big complaint about Marvel's Ultimate universe.

Yeah, I went on that same tirade in the original reboot thread. How did all that happen in five years again?

It would have taken more balls to just say; "Fuck it. Everything at zero. If you like a story so much, then fucking write it again.", but we are talking about nerds here, and no offense, but 'having balls' and comic book nerds don't really go hand in hand, pardon the obvious jumping off point for puns and jokes.

What was the approach they took after Crisis on Infinite Earths?

From what I understand (others here are probably more well versed on this stuff than I am), Batman was given a relatively soft reboot, with Year One published as a story set in the "past" rather than the "present." It pretty much just made him darker in line with his TDKR characterization, while fleshing out Gordon's personality. Batman was still an experienced hero with a history, and Dick was still Nightwing. Jason Todd was changed in another "past" story from Dick 2.0 into a troubled street kid, before being killed off about a year after. Selina was turned into an ex-prostitute, although few writers seemed comfortable with using that so they gradually phased it out.

Superman was given his own reboot arc set in the "past" that changed a lot more things (no Superboy years, no Supergirl, Kents are alive, Lex is an untouchable businessman). His regular series continued in the present with the understanding that he had also been around for a while already.

Wonder Woman was given a hard reboot that removed her long-running secret identity and completely changed her supporting cast. Her origin was set in the new present, meaning she was changed into a newbie hero just starting out her career.

The Justice League still had the same crappy Detroit roster that was in place before the Crisis happened, with much of the the same long history vaguley remaining in place (minus Wonder Woman as a founding member).

Characters like Hawkman (hard rebooted) and the Legion of Superheroes (no more Superboy to inspire them) were utterly screwed up by the new continuity, derailing them for years.

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"They're not triangular, but they are more or less blade-shaped"- Thrawn McEwok on the shape of Bakura destroyers

"Lovely. It's known as impugning character regarding statement of professional qualifications' in the legal world"- Karen Traviss, crying libel because I said that no soldier she interviewed would claim that he can take on billion-to-one odds

"I've already laid out rules for this thread that we're not going to make these evidential demands"- Dark Moose on supporting your claims