The DC Relaunch: Why it will be good and what it needs to stya that way

On August 31st and then throughout the month of september, DC comics will relaunch their entire line of comics. 52 titles will hit shelves. Reasctions to this announcement. Many fans feel betrayed by this announcement because they have been reading DC comics for years and seeing certain bits of continuity and some books dissapear does not sit well with them. Other comic book readers or people trying to get into comics see this as a breath of fresh air, as it will be a perfect jumping on point. I personally count myself as one of the excited and optimistic fans.

I have been reading comics since I was in middle school. I'm now 24 years old. As far back as I can remember, my reading list has consisted predominantly of Marvel comics. Now, please understand that I neither identify as Marvel or DC fan. I don't belive in holdiong alegiance to one company because doing so limits what you read, and when you do that, you miss out on good stories from the company that you have sworn not to read from. All that being said, most of comics have come from Marvel. I would say I read about 9 ongoing titles from them on a monthly basis. From DC, I follow about 5. Now I hold nothing against DC, but their stuff has always been a bit harder for me to get into. Their characters are often so other worldly or old school that they struggle to reamin relevent. They are also quite consfusing at times. Now this really does not affect me all that much, because I maninly stick to Batman realted tiltels and have recently dipped my foot in Green Lantern, but the reasons I just gave have kept me from much of the rest of DC.

Recently though, I was in a comic shop,and i picked up a free of DC Comics: The New 52. I was really glad to get my hands on this book as it gave me a list of books to choose from. I can tell you all right now, that I have selected 23 titles out of 52 to try. Basically from what I have read this relaunch will update the history of the characters so that DC Universe will have started 5 years ago. Some iconic character defining moments will remain, where as other moments that held less weight will be retconned. There's really no need to be nervous about what DC is trying to pull off here. In a few months, the relaunch will have gone underway, and we will all probably not even be talkin about the fact the characters we are reading about have modified and relaunched. And it's not like DC has not done this before. Look at Frank Miller's Batman: Year One and Marv Wolfman's Crisis on Infinite Earths. Both books served to update the characters involved and kept things relevent. Marvel has also done things like this too. And I'm not talking about their Ultimate line. Every once in a while, writer come along and re write the story of the 1st gathering of The Avengers or Captai America waking up in an unfamilar world. Iron Man whose origin was originally tied to the Vietnam war, has been updated to now have tied into the Afghanistan war. All 3 of these examples seem pretty positive to me. The original versions of these stories happened in the 1960's and after a while, it gets hard to belive that these characters are simply ageless. I have a feeling that by starting over, DC can redefine their characters swesomeness and even attempt to make their characters more relevent.

The only thing that concerns me is the talent involved. I'm fine with guys like Grant Moorison, Geoff Johns, Judd Winick, Jim Lee, and Doug Mahnke. But I would also like to see newer younger talent come aboard too. Mhas a good going because in addition to Brian Bendis, Mark Millar, and a few others, they have also manged to pull new writers with uinique voices like Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction, Jonathan Hickman, Matt Fraction, Jason Aaron, Daniel Way, and Rick Remender. The only new fresh voice I see at DC is Scott Snyder, who has me very pumped to read Batman issue 1. Another problem that surfaces too often at DC is constantly rotating talent teams on books. Writers will come on for a few issues and then leave. Green Lantern is really the only book I can think that has maintained a constant writer throughout recently. This makes me nervous. I'm really looking forward to reading Geoff Johns' and Jim Lee's Justice League. But how long can we expect this team to stay on board for. Geoff Johns is one of DC's busiest writers and also their Chief Creative Officer and Jim Lee's last few projects such as All Star Batman and Robin and Wildcats have remained unfinished. Jim is also now co-publisher of DC. One of the reason i enjoy comics from Marvel like the The Invincible Iron Man, Captain America, and The Avengers so much is because Bendis, Brubaker, and Fraction have all stuck around for a long time to write long term stories. The new DC needs this.