Friday, May 27, 2016
My Thoughts On DC: Rebirth
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| Jose Luis Garcia Lopez would be proud. |
Well... DC: Rebirth, the comic I'd been waiting for nearly five years was read and you know what?
I didn't know just how much I missed these characters.
Just so much to take in but my greatest takeaway is that hope has returned to The DC Universe.
Legacy has returned. Heck, even the term, "DC Universe" is back in use again!
I smiled wide at the return of Ted Kord. I missed his stupid grin.
I laughed my ass off as writer Geoff Johns exploded his sensational character find of who-gives-a-crap, Pandora.
I was heartened by the vast numbers of youthful legacy characters gently easing themselves back into the fray.
The Batman dealing with the revelation that his greatest enemy may have pulled the greatest long con of all time. Explains a lot and a little bit of brilliance.
I gasped as Johnny Thunder is still causing trouble in this DC Universe.
I gasped as I saw Johnny Thunder in this DC Universe. There will be a Justice Society of America again.
In DC: Rebirth, we saw love return to DC Comics. Ray Palmer is still in love with a crazy person but the heart still wants what it wants. Black Canary and Green Arrow. It is a thing again and I'm looking forward to seeing them see each other again with new eyes.
Thank God, The Hawks were left out. They need a lot of fixing and Rebirth just ain't the place for that.
And Wally West. Yeah.
He's back. The Flash of a generation is back and I genuinely got a bit choked up as he accepted his fate in returning to limbo. I caught myself smiling when the one person he needed the most to remember him drew him back into being. Was just a very sweet, long-awaited moment.
New life and love he has to earn all over again. A fresh start worthy of a Scarlet Speedster.
All of this and nothing brought me more joy than the shorthand of showing a ring from the future and the hope it brings to the present.
And that ending... many will debate its merits but its the rare circumstance where you can point to one thing that changed so much. I'm looking forward to where The DC Universe is headed.
I haven't thought that, much less said that, in nearly five years.
Labels: Rebirth
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I'm glad DC is doing an about-face on so much of the past few years. Hell, they killed Superman -- turned him into ash, I hear -- and what I'm feeling is, "thank God, this is overdue". That shouldn't be what I'm feeling when Superman dies, but it speaks to how far off-model Superman (and by extension the DC Universe) has been.
But I don't think Geoff Johns is the person to put on this project. He is fantastic at fixing individual heroes, but when it comes to fixing universes, he tends to magnify the problems he set out to fix, or at least drive them in further.
"Infinite Crisis" was supposed to be a rejection of the grim 'n' gritty 90s, right? Well Geoff's approach involved ripping off some characters' limbs, decapitating others, turning Superboy-Prime evil, and killing off THE ORIGINAL SUPERMAN for Christ's sake. That's less repudiation of the 90s than it is "let me show you how to do the 90s right".
Or "Blackest Night", where more people ended up dead than resurrected, I think. ... no, now that I think about it, more people ended up alive; but I get to thinking of poor Gehenna and how she got turned into salt, so that's another super grim 'n' gritty death in a universe that I thought no longer did that sort of thing.
And now "Rebirth", in which we're going to find out that the past five years have actually happened (more or less), and will form some basis for what comes next. It's like starting with a small lie and having to construct an ever-increasing web of lies to support the first one. The best solution to lies is to admit them and reject them. And the best solution to the nu52 is not to explain why it is part of continuity, but simply admit that it wasn't working out and start things at a good place again.
I don't think the meta-commentary helps either. "Infinite Crisis" was about how fanboys (Superboy-Prime) destroyed comics; "Rebirth" seems to be about how "Watchmen" destroyed comics. Besides how it's fundamentally a bad idea to literally embed that into comics, it still misses the point that the problem lies with DC's choices and not fanboys or a 25-year-old story.
So I think I agree with what Geoff wants to accomplish, I just have misgivings about his methods.
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But I don't think Geoff Johns is the person to put on this project. He is fantastic at fixing individual heroes, but when it comes to fixing universes, he tends to magnify the problems he set out to fix, or at least drive them in further.
"Infinite Crisis" was supposed to be a rejection of the grim 'n' gritty 90s, right? Well Geoff's approach involved ripping off some characters' limbs, decapitating others, turning Superboy-Prime evil, and killing off THE ORIGINAL SUPERMAN for Christ's sake. That's less repudiation of the 90s than it is "let me show you how to do the 90s right".
Or "Blackest Night", where more people ended up dead than resurrected, I think. ... no, now that I think about it, more people ended up alive; but I get to thinking of poor Gehenna and how she got turned into salt, so that's another super grim 'n' gritty death in a universe that I thought no longer did that sort of thing.
And now "Rebirth", in which we're going to find out that the past five years have actually happened (more or less), and will form some basis for what comes next. It's like starting with a small lie and having to construct an ever-increasing web of lies to support the first one. The best solution to lies is to admit them and reject them. And the best solution to the nu52 is not to explain why it is part of continuity, but simply admit that it wasn't working out and start things at a good place again.
I don't think the meta-commentary helps either. "Infinite Crisis" was about how fanboys (Superboy-Prime) destroyed comics; "Rebirth" seems to be about how "Watchmen" destroyed comics. Besides how it's fundamentally a bad idea to literally embed that into comics, it still misses the point that the problem lies with DC's choices and not fanboys or a 25-year-old story.
So I think I agree with what Geoff wants to accomplish, I just have misgivings about his methods.
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