Thursday, August 11, 2011

DC's relaunch

So as I read this week's comics I realised that everything I now read in August will be wrapping up, and I will now get a month's worth of final issues.  This will make me a little sad.  Not just because some titles are ending, but also because I think the books will feel like goodbyes, swan songs if you will.

I have a lot of things to be excited about in the new DC universe, my pull list is getting longer after all, but I shall miss the current incarnations of the characters.  I know that some of the backstories will change and I know that we will be reading new re-tellings of the classic stuff - Lois and Clark getting together, hopefully Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor, hopefully Barry and Iris - and that's actually fine by me, because I'd like to read these stories in a modern style.  It'll be fun to see another version of these myths.

But I'm still sad because I like the stories with their rich history as they are now. I like the characters' relationships as they are now.  I'm hoping that Black Canary and Green Arrow will still have a thing, I'm hoping that Wally is brought back and we get to see him and Linda reform their relationship.  I hope that Bart is till from the future with big feet, a short attention span full of innocence.  I'm hoping that Supergirl settles down and becomes a hero.  I hope Roy Harper still had a drug problem and Ollie was still a dick when dealing with it.

I don't mind if we lose specific, minor, stories - after all I can still read them, I have the issues, but it's the core themes and events and relationships and networks that I want kept.

I do applaud DC's efforts on trying to bring in new readers.  I am pleased that they have made an effort to be more diverse and are now committed to hiring more female creators.  I love the fact that they will be selling digital comics the same day the print copies are published.


So I'm a weird mixture of excited and apprehensive.  We'll see how it pans out. I'll be buying lots of issues anyway, and I'm sorely tempted to get an ipad to read the digital comics on.

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