The Post-Flashpoint DC Comics Reboot

[mike3717]

:shock: what in the world is Superboy wearing?

Does he have an "S" taped to his back like a "kick me" sign? Wow.

 

[Zombipanda]

No offense, but that doesn't work. Not in a world where all she needed to do is call Zatanna, or Dr Mid-Nite, or Accomplished Perfect Physician, or Mr Terrific, etc and she'd be healed. Yes, there were great stories with her as Oracle, but it was a cruel and pandering (and no small bit misogynistic) move to keep her in the chair. If it'd been Bruce, Ollie, Clark, he'd been back on his... oh wait, they CAME BACK FROM THE DEAD, yet no one is allowed to fix Barbara's spine? It's like all these parents projecting their kids with birth defects into Oracle, that's not why she's in a chair, she's the victim of a crime.

I understand where you're coming from, but I have to disagree here.

Was the crippling of Barbara misogynistic in the first place? Without a doubt. Killing Joke wasn't originally intended to be in continuity from what I understand, and everyone's heard the story floating around about the editor at the time (Schwartzman I think?) enthusiastically shouting "cripple the *****!". It's the most vivid example around of the sort of rabid misogyny Valeria O'razio (sp?) talked about in her blog series. But her success as Oracle is possibly the one great example I can find of a writer taking an utterly discriminatory act and reversing its subtext. Does it make sense in the context of the shared universe? No, but with that context filtered out, it becomes one of the few instances of real struggle and heroism in comic book stories. Batman and Superman came back, sure, but that was a given. They're Batman and Superman. Of course they're going to come back. Their struggles were cheap and telegraphed, stripped of emotional resonance. The best Barbara Gordon stories speak to actual experience, struggle with her disability in a way that feels genuine, in a way that superhero books rarely ever are. Had she never been shot, or been quickly recovered, and continued to run around in a bat costume, regardless of how well her stories were told, she would have continued to just be window dressing for the orbit of Batman. Instead, we have a bunch of stories that are strong and impactful in their own right. There's a believability to her experience that surpasses the sci-fi circumstances of the greater universe, and I think the former trumps the latter.

As for the projection? There's clearly at least one woman with a disability who draws inspiration from the stories, at least one person who shares that experience and gets strength from it, and I don't think that's something we should trivialize.

That said, I'll be picking Batgirl up. As far as I'm concerned, Barbara Gordon doesn't belong to DC. She belongs to Gail Simone, same as Jack Knight belongs to John Robinson or Renee Montoya belongs to Greg Rucka. Simone took a character who was disabled by the misogyny of the comics editorial system and used it as a strength, and I'm excited to see whatever she does her next.

No one screamed when Xavier walked again, and no one would scream if they decided to let the Chief from Doom Patrol walk again. This is yet another example of fans not allowing comics to appeal to the masses.

The difference is, I can't think of any stories that are genuinely about Xavier's struggle with being disabled, and any that would exist would seem kind of trivial because, well, HE'S THE WORLD'S GREATEST TELEPATH. There's a core to every character, and as long as I've been reading comic books, the core of Barbara was a character who struggles to get up and keep moving every day of her life, but who continually overcomes it and excels.

Honestly, about the appeal to the masses, I think the opposite. I think the hypothetical "common reader" out there can sympathize more with a character who struggles with and overcomes a physical disability than they can with characters who easily overcome life threatening situations with ambiguous tech and hoodoo.

The problem isn't with Barbara Gordon. It's with the universe. Her stories have meaning, but when she lives in a world where struggle has no value, it's easy to trivialize it.



Incidentally, I really like Kate Kane, Jaime Reyes, Renee Montoya, and Ryan Choi. I think, by and large, the DC people have done a spectacular job creating characters outside the white bread model that are interesting in their own right and not just as affirmative action cut-outs. They've just done a ****ty job of not killing them all off or forgetting about them. :roll:

 

[Bass]

CHARACTERS ARE GOING TO DIE...

AND YET, SOMEHOW, I JUST CAN'T SEEM TO CARE.​

 

[Grocer Man]

A few points.

1. There is a rumor going around that Barbara will remain crippled, but wearing a special Batsuit that grants normal movement for a limited time. This is based off a similar proposal by Gail to return Barbara to Batgirl. Even if that turns out to be true, I cannot say I am too fond of it, mostly because I generally don't like the whole "Silver Age hero returns to take the mantle back from his/her sucessor" that DC seems to love so much. But just pointing it out.

2. It annoys me that they are keeping the incredibly crappy work JMS did on Wonder Woman. You turn one of your flapship characters into an inexperienced rookie when she's supposed to be one of the cornerstones of the DCU and you're keeping that? Seriously, what?

3. I think part of the reason no one freaked out over Prof X being healed is because he started off crippled, and no one believed it would stick because of the cyclic nature of comics. I could very well be wrong about that, though, since I think it might have happened before we got used to that.

4. I know it's been said, but some things bear repeating. The Teen Titans cover looks awful.

 

[Random]

I completely agree with Zombipanda. Her being put in a wheel chair may have been a bad idea, but her becoming Oracle was a great idea. And I'm just annoy as **** that they just rewrite without doing a recovery story, because the impact of her finally standing back up on her own two legs is a story worth telling, whether it works in a universe where there are characters like Zatanna, where characters routinely return from the dead because it will be a perfect close to her story. Though if this is covered in the first arc than I'm happy.

2. It annoys me that they are keeping the incredibly crappy work JMS did on Wonder Woman. You turn one of your flapship characters into an inexperienced rookie when she's supposed to be one of the cornerstones of the DCU and you're keeping that? Seriously, what?

That's pretty stupid

 

[Ultimate Houde]

The more I read about this, the more the main line of DC comics (Batman, Superman, Wonder woman and the other stables) are reminding me of the 90's Marvel reboot. I don't think their reboots will stick.

But, I m excited for the new things they are trying, Frankenstein, Animal Man, Swamp Thing, those ones.

 

[Captain Canuck]

The more I read about this, the more the main line of DC comics (Batman, Superman, Wonder woman and the other stables) are reminding me of the 90's Marvel reboot. I don't think their reboots will stick.

I understand that it's difficult to tell stories about the same characters for 50-70 years without them occasionally feeling stale. And I understand that the comic companies try to shake things up in order to try and open up new potential stories and keep things "fresh". But when the continuity-shaking reboots start to feel rehashed, it really makes me wonder what is keeping this industry afloat.

I kind of wonder if the comics industry is surviving because of movies, video games, and merchandise.

 

[ProjectX2]

I kind of wonder if the comics industry is surviving because of movies, video games, and merchandise.

That's the only reason why it's still around.

 

[Planet-man]

No offense, but that doesn't work. Not in a world where all she needed to do is call Zatanna, or Dr Mid-Nite, or Accomplished Perfect Physician, or Mr Terrific, etc and she'd be healed.

Yes, there were great stories with her as Oracle, but it was a cruel and pandering (and no small bit misogynistic) move to keep her in the chair. If it'd been Bruce, Ollie, Clark, he'd been back on his... oh wait, they CAME BACK FROM THE DEAD, yet no one is allowed to fix Barbara's spine?

Waiting until real-world paralysis is cured to do it for Barbara wouldn't make any more or less sense than anything else from the last 23 straight years of her in a wheelchair. The only difference is that it would be a bit more relevant to, and connected with, the real world.

Virtually all the everyday problems of the world, big and small, can be solved by the various magical characters of the expanded DCU, so you either pay heed to that and have a ridiculously unrelatable and irrelevant universe with no scarcity, no cripples or cancer, no criminal insanity, etc. or you ignore it at will to put your characters through the issues you think will make for compelling and interesting storytelling.

I'm not even saying that the first of those two approaches is worse. It's just that DC obviously doesn't write that way. It goes for a shaky balance leaning mostly towards the second way. If a wheelchair-bound Barbara Gordon ended up making for some excellent stories and ultimately defined her character, that should take precedence over the fact that some jokers have stuck in a bunch of wizards that, technically, could heal her injury. They only did that because they wanted bigger, more colourful explosions anyway.

And the fact that some of the boys have been healed of similar injuries does not mean they have some miracle-cure gender-quota to meet at the cost of better stories and characters either.

It's like all these parents projecting their kids with birth defects into Oracle, that's not why she's in a chair, she's the victim of a crime.

How does the way she ended up in a chair preclude the years of everyday problems and realities it causes from being deeply relatable to someone who was born that way, or had a spinal tumour, or a car accident, or so on? Did you not read the article Zombipanda linked to and see the countless ways in which Oracle can touch crippled fans?

I really don't think you have any business trivializing who projects themselves onto whom or why, especially when they're doing it for reasons as serious as these.

No one screamed when Xavier walked again, and no one would scream if they decided to let the Chief from Doom Patrol walk again.

First of all, yes they did, at least for the most recent times it's happened, and second, it's a different situation anyway; he was introduced paralyzed, as Grocer Man pointed out, so people knew there was a bigger chance of this being a temporary change, which it of course was.

This is yet another example of fans not allowing comics to appeal to the masses.

So a girl in a wheelchair who has been extremely unique and well-characterized is less appealing to the masses than the same girl running as Batman sidekick #1701 after an unrealistic miracle cure or a rewritten past. Uh huh. And it's not like the wants of "the masses" are inherently more valuable than ours for any reason other than money anyway, so if that really is what they want, screw 'em. Right in their Two And A Half Men-watching asses.

Anyway, this reply is too long as it is given how many nails ZP already hit on the head with his last post.

I understand where you're coming from, but I have to disagree here.

Was the crippling of Barbara misogynistic in the first place? Without a doubt. Killing Joke wasn't originally intended to be in continuity from what I understand, and everyone's heard the story floating around about the editor at the time (Schwartzman I think?) enthusiastically shouting "cripple the *****!". It's the most vivid example around of the sort of rabid misogyny Valeria O'razio (sp?) talked about in her blog series. But her success as Oracle is possibly the one great example I can find of a writer taking an utterly discriminatory act and reversing its subtext. Does it make sense in the context of the shared universe? No, but with that context filtered out, it becomes one of the few instances of real struggle and heroism in comic book stories. Batman and Superman came back, sure, but that was a given. They're Batman and Superman. Of course they're going to come back. Their struggles were cheap and telegraphed, stripped of emotional resonance. The best Barbara Gordon stories speak to actual experience, struggle with her disability in a way that feels genuine, in a way that superhero books rarely ever are. Had she never been shot, or been quickly recovered, and continued to run around in a bat costume, regardless of how well her stories were told, she would have continued to just be window dressing for the orbit of Batman. Instead, we have a bunch of stories that are strong and impactful in their own right. There's a believability to her experience that surpasses the sci-fi circumstances of the greater universe, and I think the former trumps the latter.

As for the projection? There's clearly at least one woman with a disability who draws inspiration from the stories, at least one person who shares that experience and gets strength from it, and I don't think that's something we should trivialize.


[....]

The difference is, I can't think of any stories that are genuinely about Xavier's struggle with being disabled, and any that would exist would seem kind of trivial because, well, HE'S THE WORLD'S GREATEST TELEPATH. There's a core to every character, and as long as I've been reading comic books, the core of Barbara was a character who struggles to get up and keep moving every day of her life, but who continually overcomes it and excels.

Honestly, about the appeal to the masses, I think the opposite. I think the hypothetical "common reader" out there can sympathize more with a character who struggles with and overcomes a physical disability than they can with characters who easily overcome life threatening situations with ambiguous tech and hoodoo.

The problem isn't with Barbara Gordon. It's with the universe. Her stories have meaning, but when she lives in a world where struggle has no value, it's easy to trivialize it.

Best parts bolded.

 

[Gothamite]

Is Rob Liefeld working on Hawk and Dove in some capacity? Because I might actually start reading that if so. It'd be really cool to have Liefeld working for DC Comics.



*Shoot self*

 

[ProjectX2]

Stormwatch, Blackhawks, Sgt. Rock and the Men of War, All-Star Western, Deathstroke, Grifter and Omac.

Things are getting pretty crazy. That brings us to 46 titles. It sounds like the last six might be: Superman, Action Comics, Supergirl, Superboy, Superman Beyond and Batman Beyond.

I wonder how many of these are actually going to last?

 

[Zombipanda]

Stormwatch, Blackhawks, Sgt. Rock and the Men of War, All-Star Western, Deathstroke, Grifter and Omac.

Things are getting pretty crazy. That brings us to 46 titles. It sounds like the last six might be: Superman, Action Comics, Supergirl, Superboy, Superman Beyond and Batman Beyond.

I wonder how many of these are actually going to last?

That's a really interesting line-up. You can't blame them for not playing with a wide range of titles.

I wonder if the new same day policy means books that otherwise would have too modest sales to continue publication might now survive on a digital only model.




Also, really Dan Didio? You're gonna write again?

Really?

 

[Dr.Strangefate]

Stormwatch is one of the first signs that they might actually have a plan for the integration of Wildstorm into the DCU. And putting Paul Cornell in charge is the best ****ing thing they could have done. This is the first real surprise of the whole launch, and it's one I'm going to eat right up.

Giving Grifter to Nathan Edmundson (Who Killed Jake Ellis?) is the other big sign.

 

[bluebeast]

Well I've been out of buying comics for awhile so this should be a good jumping back on point (still need Blackest Night though...) I think I'll trade wait:

Justice League Its finally back to a good lineup with great creators but still no Martian Manhunter for some reason (though he'll probably show up and Cyborg does look interesting)
Aquaman If Johns does for this what he did for GL then I'm sold and Reis is just awesome.
The Flash They better involve Wally in this some how but the art looks great.
JLI That line-up looks pretty good like they're actually taking the International part of the name seriously. Plus Booster Gold.
Green Lantern Hope this stays good.
Batwoman J.H. Williams. Come on...
Frankenstein, Voodoo, Resurrection Man, I, Vampire If the horror books do well I'll check them out but I'll probably wait on these.
Swamp Thing I still need to read Alan Moore's run first before I jump into this.
Legion of Superheroes The art looks purdy.
Stormwatch Authority was the only Wildstorm book I could ever get into plus Martian Manhunter!
Superman Grant Morrison. Nuff said.
Batman Inc. I have to finish Morrison's Batman-Epic.
Justice League Dark I love me some espionage stories and that line-ups great. (I'd prefer a Suicide Squad reboot though)

Teen Titans looks horrible and Red Hood and the Outlaws and Nightwing may have to take up that corner of the universe for me. Blackhawks and Sgt. Rock look like interesting modernizations. Hawkman looks awful which sucks because I was hoping for a great reboot of him. None of the Bat-Books really interest me besides Batwoman and Inc. and I agree that Barbara should've stayed as Oracle, I mean Stephanie's only been in the suit for what a year? Fury of Firestorm also looks interesting so that may be something to look out for.

All in all I'll probably pick up four or five of these in trades anyway so I won't get my hopes up.

 

[E]

There's a core to every character, and as long as I've been reading comic books, the core of Barbara was a character who struggles to get up and keep moving every day of her life, but who continually overcomes it and excels.

There's a line she had about watching the sun rise to Jim that, now, I can't remember and don't know what book it was from, and if I tried to paraphrase it would totally butcher the point, so I'll just shut up now.

But anyway, it was good and fit right in with what Zombipanda said. You'll just have to trust me.

 

[Jaggyd]

Stormwatch is one of the first signs that they might actually have a plan for the integration of Wildstorm into the DCU. And putting Paul Cornell in charge is the best ****ing thing they could have done. This is the first real surprise of the whole launch, and it's one I'm going to eat right up.

Giving Grifter to Nathan Edmundson (Who Killed Jake Ellis?) is the other big sign.

Wait... wait... Paul Cornell's doing Stormwatch??? *dies from happiness*

 

[Dr.Strangefate]

Wait... wait... Paul Cornell's doing Stormwatch??? *dies from happiness*

You won't be quite as happy when you see the Apollo and Midnighter costumes, but if you ignore that, and the simple fact that those characters are going to continue existing as a part of a pseudo-Authority book co-starring Martian Manhunter written by Cornell, it balances out nicely.

The Midnighter outfit could be made much better by a few simple tweaks (no chin spike, for instance), but I think Apollo needs to let his hair grow a bit. And you know what? This is the DCU. Let's give him a yellow cape. That costume looks like it could use a cape.

 

[Jaggyd]

You won't be quite as happy when you see the Apollo and Midnighter costumes, but if you ignore that, and the simple fact that those characters are going to continue existing as a part of a pseudo-Authority book co-starring Martian Manhunter written by Cornell, it balances out nicely.

The Midnighter outfit could be made much better by a few simple tweaks (no chin spike, for instance), but I think Apollo needs to let his hair grow a bit. And you know what? This is the DCU. Let's give him a yellow cape. That costume looks like it could use a cape.

Yeah, not a huge fan of well, any of the new DCU costumes. From an artistic standpoint, they're too overwrought. What makes stuff like Superman's (and by extension Apollo's) costume work, is the simplicity. Sure you can do complex textures (like Batman's recent movie costumes) or even like reboot Wonder Woman's corset, but the costume itself needs to be bold and simple. Honestly, they did a great job with J'onn in that pic, but Apollo is hurting in design, Midnighter looks like Jim Lee was like "HEY! I'll use Todd McFarlane's school of design".

I know it sounds narcissistic, but I think I could have built better reboot designs.

 

[ProjectX2]

Suicide Squad, Blue Beetle, and covers for Superman, Supergirl and Superboy.

Grant Morrison's Action Comics as the final announcement?

 

[Zombipanda]

Gail Simone speaks one on one with Jill Pantozzi about the Batgirl reboot.

God, I love that woman.