DC Reboot

Not a fan of the DC Reboot. Mainly due to the typically blunt and clumsy marketing of it. Rather than build excitement amongst the existing rusted on fans, DC as the glove puppet of Warner have basically ignored them, despite throwing bones to the usual suspects among the comic websites, and Warner has kept its eye on the prize of same day digital and marketing to the mainstream.

The silly thing about this is that comicbooks a la DC (or Marvel) are classic Americana. No question. So divorcing them from this in favour of increasingly strange takes on the characters is not only not a great way to farm IP, it's also a superb opportunity for people who have never read DC... To keep right on not reading it.

Warner's assault on the mainstream for its digital comics is good for indies like us because any boost in awareness helps the numbers game, but our own TOP SECRET plans will be of more benefit to us. A lot of comicbook people, even top artists and writers, seem to be genuinely not making the money they used to, and that has fuelled a lack of criticism over DC's move which I am sure many secretly feel.

Of great significance in all of this is the manifestation of open control Warner now exercise. The puppets who are the public face of DC have no power. Warner suits have the power. Unfortunately they also have a total air gap between themselves and any love or "reverence" (fanboy concept) for the characters DC usually milks.

DC has never had a coherent shared universe from day one to now, stupidity like Crisis notwithstanding, so we're talking about loosely connected character each basted in their own slurry. But the suits being in control is shades of the 1969 death of Marvel time and normal ageing, and even more so it's shades of the 1990s. I personally think the reason the DC Reboot is so 1990s-ish is because the suits in charge remember that as what comics were like when they sold in the 100,000s and millions for the last time.

All in all, DC is definitely circling the drain despite the reboot. Marvel is long since dead in all but name despite its books "selling so well" (compared to? they make the circulation of business magazines look good) and the endless Marvel circle jerk with the same seven people endlessly recycling the same fourteen plots from the same narrow 1970s Marvel set of issues has to end soon. DC's shift and collapse will be the trigger for a brave new world of some sort, that's for sure.