On the DC Comics reboot

I feel a little silly writing about DC Comics' latest reboot (for the second time, in fact): I'm jaded enough that it looks like nothing more than another stunt to boost DC's flagging sales. Yet a small part of me, the part that would still be collecting comics (mostly Vertigo) if money, storage space and time permitted, always hopes that "this is The Change That Won't Be Undone".

That part of me forced me to point you at Scott Tipton's 7 September 2011 Comics 101 column, in which he wistfully reflects on what DC is sacrificing with this latest revamp of its entire comics line.

As comics fans nationwide try to get their head around what's happening and what's never happened in the DCU [DC Universe], let's take a moment to bid a fond farewell to something that presumably will not be a part of the new regime.

Legacy.

The "legacy" to which Tipton refers is the seven or eight decades of stories and character histories that were part of the DC Universe's internal history, the history of which its characters were aware. Apparently, DC has taken that awareness away. It's a clean slate in which neither the characters nor readers have to care what some hack comics writer facing a deadline whipped up decades ago.

The clean slate has its advantages for writers, of course: now they don't have to know decades of comics history before they can tell a story. But Tipton sees a downside.

Some of my favorite books simply could never have happened under the current plan. Case in point: STARMAN.

(If you're unfamiliar with James Robinson's simply terrific comic series, I strongly recommend you correct your oversight.)

I appreciate Tipton's point, and Starman is one of my favorite books, too. It's worth asking, though, what DC comics fans are really giving up.

I've read a small number of Golden and Silver Age DC comics in reprints. They ... how can I put this delicately ... lacked sophistication. The artwork was, by modern standards, sketchy, if you'll pardon the pun. As for the stories -- well, they made the artwork look pretty sharp by comparison.

Remember, too, that the comics I read were those DC thought so important or of such high quality (for their time) that they deserved to be republished. The rest, presumably, were even worse.

All those mediocre old comics became grist for Robinson's mill. From them he wove new stories that, while respectful of and arising out of the primitive source material, were sophisticated and smart enough to be enjoyable to adults. He took characters who never had much depth, a lot of them going all the way back to the Golden Age, and gave them enough complexity that you could care about them. This is a lot harder to pull off than grim'n'gritty, as in The Dark Knight. (I appreciate the latter as well -- just not as much as Starman.)

It would be a mistake, though, to imagine that Robinson's work is typical of the quality of DC's attempts to keep its older characters alive and kicking. At least, it wasn't typical as of when I stopped collecting over a decade ago. Only Alan Moore's two-issue valentine to the Superman mythos, "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?", was of comparable excellence. For the rest, well, you needed to be a hardcore addict of continuity to enjoy them. Most writers didn't want to play with second (or third, or fourth) stringers like Starman and the other denizens of the Golden Age; most of those who did, didn't do awe-inspiring jobs. Over 75 years, only a handful of writers, including Robinson and Moore, managed to make enduring works out of all that history.

In short, the vastly greater part of that "legacy" Tipton mourns the loss of isn't all that exciting when you take a close look at it.

Maybe setting it aside isn't so bad.