DC New 52: How Far We’ve Come

With DC’s Second Wave coming in, I think now is a good time to look back at the DC New 52 Reboot. For those who have been living in a cave for the last year or so, the New 52 is DC’s rebooted universe. Way back in September of 2011 DC released 52 new comic series, some new some old and reset the issue count at the shiny new #1. Almost all of the characters and storylines have been reset to a new beginning. The decision to change so much of the DC universe met with some mixed reaction from the fans. I distinctly remember an attendant at New York Comic Con last year wearing an “I hate 52” t-shirt and who considered the reboot to be a “murder” of the characters. However I am not one of those fans. I think that it was a smart and more or less well executed decision on the behalf of DC to start over.

To be completely honest, I am still a relative newcomer to comics. By that I mean, I only started buying comics on a weekly basis a few months before the reboot and even then it was only a few titles, mainly Green Lantern, Teen Titans, and Red Robin. I was wary of getting into that it was unlikely that I could catch up. However, the reboot allowed me to start over. Suddenly, I was no longer bound by the old continuities and what details I read on the internet. It was a way to get into stories and series from the beginning. In a sense that was the strength of the reboot. It allowed new readers to come into comics and not need to worry about decades of history to understand the story or characters. For older fans it was a new take on characters and was not the first time that DC had changed its continuity dramatically, look at Crisis on Infinite Earths. If nothing else it was a great publicity move and a way to introduce comics to a new generation of readers who have already been exposed to comic book movies for the last decade.

I will admit that DC seemed to be throwing a lot a stuff at the wall and seeing what stuck. When the first wave of comics came out, I was buying somewhere around 17 titles. I’m down to about ten or eleven at this point. In fact some of the titles are the ones recently or about to be dropped by DC due to low sales. And in all fairness this was to be expected, it was unlikely that all new titles would be have the same popularity and I have to say some of the titles frankly were not all that good. However I feel that some of the writing, particularly the Batman titles and Green Lantern titles, is very good and I find myself looking forward to picking up new issues each Wednesday.

The DC New 52 definitely shook things up in the comic world and I feel it was for the better. It is a great way for new readers to get started without having to buy trades or look up storylines in order to understand the storylines. Also, some of the redesigns and new stories are quite good, particularly Superman. And if you haven’t picked up DC’s Second Wave yet, I recommend World’s Finest and Earth-2. They’re quite good.

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