Brief DC Thoughts

I have mixed emotions about DC’s announcements this week regarding a line-wide reboot and their digital release approach. It’s essentially divided by whether or not I choose to view the news from the retail perspective or the fan perspective, essentially capturing the commerce vs. art paradigm pretty succinctly. I completely sympathize with retailer outcry on this. Launching dozens of first issues, simultaneously, on top of a day and date release strategy is a bold decisive move (which I’m generally a fan of), but it comes with a very high appetite for risk. It potentially has major repercussions and/or disastrous consequences, the effects of which cannot be predicted, nor redacted once set in motion. It is the very definition of a high risk, high reward proposition.

Purely as a fan though? I’m actually pretty excited about it. Conceptually. I say “conceptually” because I would like to think that for me personally this could be a major jumping on point. I’ve long been out of touch with the happenings in the DCU. There hasn’t been a book for years that I felt I could really get a grasp on, much less support financially, one that would anchor me in the DCU, and one that was left unfettered by major event upheaval, rotating creative teams, inconsistent quality, or started and aborted attempts. In theory, I’d love to be buying and enjoying a Justice League book, Justice League International sounds fun to anyone who read it in the 80's, Mister Terrific is an interesting character to tinker with… Nightwing, Batgirl, yes, I’d love to be buying and enjoying these books! But ultimately it comes right down to perceived value. The bottom line is that if this publishing strategy yields better comics, then I’m in. But so many questions follow. Can good creative teams be tasked? Can that be sustained? I like Jim Lee’s art, but honestly, how many issues can the guy consecutively crank out judging by past performances? At this point, the only two books that have really caught my eye are a) the assumable Batwoman (finally!) restart by JH Williams III, and b) Wonder Woman by Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang. As far as I’m concerned Azz & Chiang are a top tier creative team with a proven track record that seems well suited for this character. I’ve never purchased a Wonder Woman comic that I can recall, but I’ll be first in line for this. That in itself seems like a win. If there are more experiences like this than off-putting options which don't pull new and old readers in, then maybe this will actually work.