DCU: Rebirth (Smashing the reset button yet again)

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TimothyC
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DCU: Rebirth (Smashing the reset button yet again)

Post by TimothyC »

On one level, we all knew that the "New 52" wasn't going to last, and finally the end is upon us. That said, for issue one
Spoiler
Dr. Manhattan vs Dr. Fate? Is that something we are going to see?
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Re: DCU: Rebirth (Smashing the reset button yet again)

Post by mr friendly guy »

WTF? Post crisis but pre 52 Superman is now around in the world of post 52 Superman? Meanwhile post 52 Superman is MIA presumed dead (although a time travelling Legionnaire hints he will come back), and a new force we have never seen before has altered history (again, didn't Superboy Prime do that with punching the source wall).

http://io9.gizmodo.com/what-is-the-deal ... 1767578897

Ok, it seems like Spoiler
Doctor Manhattan
is the bad guy

Say what.
http://io9.gizmodo.com/dc-comics-lifts- ... 1778185214

To top it all off, apparently we have to wait 1-2 years for these storylines to reach fruition.

More spoilers
http://io9.gizmodo.com/every-major-reve ... 1778505653

And I guess since its going to crossover with Watchmen
http://io9.gizmodo.com/io9-round-table- ... 1778575295 (some of the comments are funny such as Silk Spectre teaming up with Harley Quinn. By the bristling beard of Odin (yeah I know, wrong company) you just know its going to happen.
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Re: DCU: Rebirth (Smashing the reset button yet again)

Post by Crown »

I would love it if the spoiler tag thing disappears from this board since it's buggy as shit, but anyway;
mr friendly guy wrote:WTF? Post crisis but pre 52 Superman is now around in the world of post 52 Superman? Meanwhile post 52 Superman is MIA presumed dead (although a time travelling Legionnaire hints he will come back), and a new force we have never seen before has altered history (again, didn't Superboy Prime do that with punching the source wall).
Confused with the highlighted part, I presume you mean 52 Superman is now MIA? And post crisis but pre 52 Superman has been in the 52 for (I wanna say) 7 months now.

And I don't think the /spoiler'd person in your post is 'the bad guy' per se, he's just the 'entity' that they're gonna use to retcon rebirth the DC legacy stuff.

Can't wait, feels exciting.
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Re: DCU: Rebirth (Smashing the reset button yet again)

Post by Simon_Jester »

[eyes cross]

Isn't this kind of confusing continuity spam the sort of thing DC usually tries to avoid by rebooting the universe hard every 10-15 years?
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Re: DCU: Rebirth (Smashing the reset button yet again)

Post by Grumman »

Simon_Jester wrote:[eyes cross]

Isn't this kind of confusing continuity spam the sort of thing DC usually tries to avoid by rebooting the universe hard every 10-15 years?
Yes, it is. But they wouldn't be rebooting the universe every 10-15 years if they were actually any good at it. Keeping the canon clear of stupid requires not just clearing out the stupid that already exists, but also making sure that nobody adds new stupid to replace it.
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Re: DCU: Rebirth (Smashing the reset button yet again)

Post by TimothyC »

Simon_Jester wrote:[eyes cross]

Isn't this kind of confusing continuity spam the sort of thing DC usually tries to avoid by rebooting the universe hard every 10-15 years?
The DCU has really only had two hard reboots - Crisis on Infinite Earths in 1986, and Flashpoint in 2011. Other, softer reboots took place in 1994 (Zerohour), 2005 (Infinite Crisis), and 2008/9 (Final Crisis). That said, while Flashpoint was fun, the fallout from it (setting up the "New52") wasn't, and it wasn't well received by many. For me, I grew up with one superman continuity (Death of Superman, What's so funny About Truth, Justice, and the American Way, Last son, New Krypton through Grounded; with special appreciation for the work done by Johns & Company from 2006-2010), and the loss of that is why I lost interest for the most part.
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Re: DCU: Rebirth (Smashing the reset button yet again)

Post by mr friendly guy »

Crown wrote:I would love it if the spoiler tag thing disappears from this board since it's buggy as shit, but anyway;
mr friendly guy wrote:WTF? Post crisis but pre 52 Superman is now around in the world of post 52 Superman? Meanwhile post 52 Superman is MIA presumed dead (although a time travelling Legionnaire hints he will come back), and a new force we have never seen before has altered history (again, didn't Superboy Prime do that with punching the source wall).
Confused with the highlighted part, I presume you mean 52 Superman is now MIA? And post crisis but pre 52 Superman has been in the 52 for (I wanna say) 7 months now.

And I don't think the /spoiler'd person in your post is 'the bad guy' per se, he's just the 'entity' that they're gonna use to retcon rebirth the DC legacy stuff.

Can't wait, feels exciting.
Well people call him post 52 Superman as well as New 52 Superman, so I just used that term. As for pre 52 Supes, I don't read that particular comic so I had no freaking clue he was back. It seems like DC is saying fuck you to the New 52 Superman by bringing back the post crisis and pre 52 Superman into current continuity. And it just occurs to me a new comic book reader will have no idea what we are talking about with all these pre 52, post crisis, new 52 terminology. Which kind of makes it hard for new readers to get into it.
TimothyC wrote:
Simon_Jester wrote:[eyes cross]

Isn't this kind of confusing continuity spam the sort of thing DC usually tries to avoid by rebooting the universe hard every 10-15 years?
The DCU has really only had two hard reboots - Crisis on Infinite Earths in 1986, and Flashpoint in 2011. Other, softer reboots took place in 1994 (Zerohour), 2005 (Infinite Crisis), and 2008/9 (Final Crisis). That said, while Flashpoint was fun, the fallout from it (setting up the "New52") wasn't, and it wasn't well received by many. For me, I grew up with one superman continuity (Death of Superman, What's so funny About Truth, Justice, and the American Way, Last son, New Krypton through Grounded; with special appreciation for the work done by Johns & Company from 2006-2010), and the loss of that is why I lost interest for the most part.
For the main DCU, I would agree that some of those reboots are definitely softer. I am however also a fan of Legion of Superheroes and their reboots occur more frequently. Zero hour was a major reboot for the LSH.

There is pre crisis LSH, post crisis (with Andromeda replacing Supergirl), post zero hour (totally new team, which we now know exists as the Wanderers wandering between universes because theirs got destroyed, thanks DC) and the Threeboot (who had lots of members killed in the Legion of three worlds storyline) and now the current team (before the series got cancalled) is a mixture of pre crisis and post crisis, but pre zero hour continuity, although they had Gates from post zero hour continuity join the team. That being said, Legion of Three worlds was freaking awesome, seeing all the Legions in their incarnations take on the villains.
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Re: DCU: Rebirth (Smashing the reset button yet again)

Post by TimothyC »

mr friendly guy wrote:For the main DCU, I would agree that some of those reboots are definitely softer. I am however also a fan of Legion of Superheroes and their reboots occur more frequently. Zero hour was a major reboot for the LSH.

There is pre crisis LSH, post crisis (with Andromeda replacing Supergirl), post zero hour (totally new team, which we now know exists as the Wanderers wandering between universes because theirs got destroyed, thanks DC) and the Threeboot (who had lots of members killed in the Legion of three worlds storyline) and now the current team (before the series got cancalled) is a mixture of pre crisis and post crisis, but pre zero hour continuity, although they had Gates from post zero hour continuity join the team. That being said, Legion of Three worlds was freaking awesome, seeing all the Legions in their incarnations take on the villains.
Quite right. I was simply explaining to Simon (who is not as big of a DCU reader as some of us are) the short history of DC smashing the reset button. Also, Legion of Three Worlds was the only part that made Final Crisis tolerable.

To elaborate, there are/were four main versions of Superman:
  • Golden Age Superman (Kal-L)
  • Silver Age Superman (all the powers!)
  • Post-CoIE Superman - This is the one that died fighting Doomsday, was involved in the 100 minute war between Earth and New Krypton, before going away with Flashpoint
  • new-52 Superman. The one that just died.
The Rebirth/Post-Rebirth "Superman" on Earth, is a version of the Post-CoIE Superman, who got dropped there following Convergence, a multi-part story that didn't seem to go anywhere at the time.
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Re: DCU: Rebirth (Smashing the reset button yet again)

Post by RogueIce »

TimothyC wrote:That said, while Flashpoint was fun, the fallout from it (setting up the "New52") wasn't, and it wasn't well received by many.
The thing I remember about the New 52 reboot was their dumb decision to rebrand everything back to Issue 1...when Action Comics was so very close to hitting Issue 1000. It was like, seriously DC, you couldn't fucking wait a year or so for your stupid reboot event?
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Re: DCU: Rebirth (Smashing the reset button yet again)

Post by Bedlam »

RogueIce wrote:
TimothyC wrote:That said, while Flashpoint was fun, the fallout from it (setting up the "New52") wasn't, and it wasn't well received by many.
The thing I remember about the New 52 reboot was their dumb decision to rebrand everything back to Issue 1...when Action Comics was so very close to hitting Issue 1000. It was like, seriously DC, you couldn't fucking wait a year or so for your stupid reboot event?
Well now Action Comics and Detective Comics are starting again at the numbers they were at before New 52 came into existence, I think they're even going twice monthly like about half the new comics.
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Re: DCU: Rebirth (Smashing the reset button yet again)

Post by Galvatron »

Holy shit at that ending!
Spoiler
Could this Rebirth actually be signaling a grand unification of the DC Snyderverses? Could the Comedian and Thomas Wayne actually be doppelgangers? :D
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Re: DCU: Rebirth (Smashing the reset button yet again)

Post by The Romulan Republic »

That its a reboot is not what I have a problem with. I think franchises like this should generally be rebooted every ten years or so in order to allow for new takes on the premise without contradicting or being bound by past continuity, or being weighed down by past mistakes.

No, the problem is that like with Marvel, DC's management seems to have, at most, only a theoretical grasp of the word "competency". They have a tendency to go for shock value and exploitation, not strong characters and narratives. So I have no confidence that what comes next will actually be worth reading.
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Re: DCU: Rebirth (Smashing the reset button yet again)

Post by Vendetta »

To be honest, the soap opera franchise model of comics publishing needs to die anyway.

Neither DC or Marvel learned the lesson Watchmen was intended to teach, which is that stories are stronger when they have a defined novel-type structure with a beginning, middle, and end. Where the beginning is the actual beginning with nothing before it and the end is the actual end with nothing after it.

So they continue with what is, lets face it, a necrotic publishing model which only exists to maintain IP rights which they can farm out to actually profitable media instead.

Editorial doesn't care about the quality of stories, just keeping the IP rights to things by keeping them in print, so if you get a good story out of one of the Big Two it was an accident (and the person who wrote it probably got screwed over).
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Post by jwl »

To be honest, watchmen was never really all that good anyway. It's an above-average comic which got a lot of publicity. For the kind of cynical take on superheros I much prefer Kingdom Come or others to Watchmen (of course, Kingdom Come also has a beginning, middle, and end).
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Re: DCU: Rebirth (Smashing the reset button yet again)

Post by Crown »

Alright; read the following Rebirth one shots; Superman, Batman, Green Arrow and Green Lanterns. I will be continuing with Superman and Green Lanterns ... not sure about Green Arrow but not Batman for now. I'll wait and see for that, keeping in mind that I'm waiting on Wonder Woman and Flash this week as well.
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Re: DCU: Rebirth (Smashing the reset button yet again)

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I'm going more for the side titles myself, Batgirl, Birds of prey, Blue Beatle, Hellblazer. The only sort of central title I'm planning on is Detective Comics, mostly because that seems to be where most of the Batman secondary cast is going to be staying, Casandra Cain, Spoiler, Tim Drake, etc, sticking with it will depend if they keep that line up long term. I'm considering Supergirl because it sounds like they're going to have the Legion of Superheroes in them although I never think they're much good when they're set in the 20th century.
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Re: DCU: Rebirth (Smashing the reset button yet again)

Post by Crown »

Bedlam wrote:I'm going more for the side titles myself, Batgirl, Birds of prey, Blue Beatle, Hellblazer. The only sort of central title I'm planning on is Detective Comics, mostly because that seems to be where most of the Batman secondary cast is going to be staying, Casandra Cain, Spoiler, Tim Drake, etc, sticking with it will depend if they keep that line up long term. I'm considering Supergirl because it sounds like they're going to have the Legion of Superheroes in them although I never think they're much good when they're set in the 20th century.
Forgot about the Blue Beetle, didn't they re-retcon it to be magical now and not alien? :mrgreen:
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Re: DCU: Rebirth (Smashing the reset button yet again)

Post by Bedlam »

Crown wrote:
Bedlam wrote:I'm going more for the side titles myself, Batgirl, Birds of prey, Blue Beatle, Hellblazer. The only sort of central title I'm planning on is Detective Comics, mostly because that seems to be where most of the Batman secondary cast is going to be staying, Casandra Cain, Spoiler, Tim Drake, etc, sticking with it will depend if they keep that line up long term. I'm considering Supergirl because it sounds like they're going to have the Legion of Superheroes in them although I never think they're much good when they're set in the 20th century.
Forgot about the Blue Beetle, didn't they re-retcon it to be magical now and not alien? :mrgreen:
That's what's in the rebirth comic, they're working on a sort of reverse Clark's Law, it's magic which has been mistaken for science (Although from what I remember when it was first dug up it was assumed to be magic and then found to be science).
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Re: DCU: Rebirth (Smashing the reset button yet again)

Post by TimothyC »

Two Superwomen!
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Re: DCU: Rebirth (Smashing the reset button yet again)

Post by TimothyC »

Superman #7 is a good look at the family dynamic they have set up for the Superman/Action line. It's also the nail in the coffin for the new52 "He's Superman before he's Clark" mindset. It's great.
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Re: DCU: Rebirth (Smashing the reset button yet again)

Post by Tsyroc »

I've been reading Wonder Woman: Rebirth. So far it is pretty good.

The book is currently alternating (from issue to issue) between the beginning of her career and the current day. There's supposedly some big lie she's about herself that she's looking into in the current story.

It's the "origin story" that I've been liking the most. For one thing they made it clear that Diana was the best Amazon, hands down, and was expected to win the contest that sent her to Man's World. She gets the gifts from the gods after she's in Man's world. Prior to the New 52 that bit was messed up. I mean, how could she fairly win the contest between Amazons if she supposedly had her other powers since she was a child? I'm presuming that was a screw up on one writer/editor's part but it is clear now.

One of the changes is that Steve Trevor is a Navy SEAL and not in the Air Force. What was interesting about that change is the Amazons examining the patches on his uniform and interpreting the eagle and anchor as referring to Zeus and Poseidon.


I've read a little bit of Supergirl: Rebirth. They've kind of skewed it towards the TV show a bit, but with some changes so it's not exactly alike. The Adventures of Supergirl takes place in the TV show universe and has been okay, but fairly light.
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