‘What do you think of the DC reboot,’ my co-worker asked me when they first announced it. ‘Pfft, I don’t care,’ I said dismissively, genuinely believing this to be the case. But I was wrong. It turns out I just hadn’t really considered it yet.
I stopped regularly buying single issues of things a couple of years ago when my comic book collection started to grow well beyond the space I had allotted for it in the small Brooklyn apartment I share with my wife. As my friend put it; single issues, or ‘floppies’ are basically fetish items. We buy them, read them once, seal them in plastic and then probably never read them again. We own them just to own them, and that’s fine, I just don’t have the space.
Since then I’ve started holding out for the meatier trade paperbacks or hardcover editions that inevitably compile the comics I want to read. I like this method because it helps me traverse the minefield of the comics industry with the benefit of other peoples’ hindsight. I’m now less likely to get invested in a series if most people tell me it will inevitably lead to disappointment.
This in mind, I figured that the reboot and much of ‘current’ comic continuity had become other peoples’ problem. I don’t follow it too closely, I just try to enjoy individual books or series on their own merits and if DC want to reboot their entire franchise in the ballsiest move I’ve heard of in recent comic-book history, then so be it, it’s not going to affect me much.
But, the more I heard about it, the more difficult it became to maintain my nonchalant attitude. Pretty soon I noticed my own opinions forming on a range of things, much to my dismay, and I couldn’t stop that tidal wave from bursting through the floodgates of my better judgement. This news story of a reboot had shattered my ‘casual-reader’ façade and dragged my inner-fanboy out to play.
First of all, I have to point out that this fact alone is a good thing for comics. I remember reading an article (forgive me for paraphrasing without remembering where I read it, or who wrote it) wherein the author posited that audacity has long been the key to creating good and successful comics. If you’re not pissing people off, you’re simply not doing it right. If you’ve got people the world over talking about it for any reason… well… all publicity is good publicity.
So before we continue, I have to commend DC Comics on, if nothing else, having massive balls. The kind of balls that are so big that smaller balls must orbit them.
My first introduction to this reboot, as was the case for many people, was this image of the JLA, featuring many familiar faces, including a Wonder Woman with trousers, a Superman without red underpants on the outside, a more heavily armoured Batman than we’re used to and a Cyborg who’s ride seems to have been well and truly pimped. This seems to be a good place to start, seeing as the costume changes have been heavily debated across the internet.
SUPERMAN
First, let’s look at Superman’s costume change.
It may just be this image, but the first thing to strike me about his costume was the darker shade of blue. I don’t much care about that, I think so long as you maintain a red and blue colour scheme, you’re on the right track.
Then my eyes were drawn to the S… now… you probably don’t know this about me, but I love the Superman symbol. So much so that I have it on my watch and on a steel key-ring, so I look at it every day multiple times. This design looks sleeker, more angular and as though Jim Lee (or whomever designed it initially) took pains to modernize it. That doesn’t come to me as a surprise, seeing as I guess this reboot is all about modernizing DC’s franchises. However, it just seems very obvious that’s what they were shooting for. That’s not to say I have a problem with it, it’s certainly not my favourite take on the old S-Shield, but it’s not as though it’ll ruin my enjoyment of the books to see it. Maybe it needed modernizing and I’m too close to the previous version to see it myself (I certainly wouldn’t rule that out).
This all brings us finally to what is perhaps the most noteworthy change of all; the absence of his super-red-undies. Thank Christ.
Certain elements define Superman; flight, the red & blue colour scheme, the square jaw, the red cape, the S-Shield and… sadly the underpants. I don’t say this because I personally hate the design, I don’t. But then I’ve grown up with it, I’m accustomed to it and I don’t have any trouble suspending my disbelief when it comes to reading about a whole world wherein everybody takes such a ridiculous fashion decision seriously. In my own head I’ve actually rationalized that this is a Kryptonian fashion adopted by a pining alien who is the last of his race, but it took me years to come to that conclusion and once I had, I had nothing to explain why Batman would copy the same look, other than that he thought it looked damned good on Superman (I do have my theories about those guys, but that’s a whole ‘nother article).
Let’s be realistic, the idea of bold costumes like the one we saw above in the real world is ridiculous to most people, even though superheroes are growing ever more popular in movies. But oh so much more ridiculous is the idea of wearing your underpants over your damned trousers. It’s been a running joke for everyone, even people who don’t read comics, since superman’s conception and if there’s one element that Superman’s costume could do without when it comes to reaching a wider modern audience, then I think we’ve found it.
Also as a footnote, does this design strike anyone as being reminiscent of the ill-fated J. J. Abrams movie design?
BATMAN
I have no real opinions about Batman’s costume change. Perhaps it’s a little overworked? Eh. The movies have proven time and time over that the only things we need to see to accept that a character is Batman are some pointy ears, some dark colours and a cape. The comics have revisited his costume many times before and I’ve always been fine with it.
WONDER WOMAN
Wonder Woman. This is a fun one! Let’s look at the two big changes here to the classic costume…
She’s wearing trousers. This is very much the red-underpants moment of the Wonder Woman costume. I’ve discussed this character at length with my wife and why she just isn’t as successful as she seems like she should be. DC always try to bill her as one of their big three iconic characters, but in all honesty I think Robin outranks her in that regard. People know Robin much better than they know Wonder Woman… I’ve even met DC employees who don’t know which powers she has.
Superman and Batman have a bunch of well defined character traits that literally anyone can tell you about. Ask anyone (even non-comic-fans) and they’ll use words like ‘Boy Scout’ or ‘Dark Knight’ and so forth. With Wonder Woman, most people don’t know anything about her aside from that she dresses sexily and the surrounding guys all drool over her. She’s basically a blow-up-doll. I’m not saying that characters shouldn’t have sex appeal, just that it shouldn’t be the main selling point of one of the most recognizable characters you own.
If you sell Wonder Woman on her appeal to men it seems to force her into a somewhat submissive role.
Well, except in this picture;
See what you can buy with Bruce Wayne money?
Anyway, if you want this character to be equal to your two most iconic male characters, then it’s not enough to make her physically strong, you have to make her character strong too and stop letting her be defined by what the male characters think of her. Think about it – if you’re a guy reading a comic about Superman, you want the surrounding cast to have more to say about him other than that they want to fuck him – and you want what they say to have context and seem natural. Rather often with Wonder Woman, when she’s not complimented on her looks she seems to get compliments on many things that she hasn’t earned.
So Wonder Woman doesn’t appeal to women as much as she could, or should.
Part of the reason for that probably lies in the costume and how unrealistic it is. Very few women would wear it in public, let alone if they wanted to be taken seriously in law enforcement. She looks like a stripper. That costume is clearly designed for men’s enjoyment and not for women, so it’s hard for a woman to look at the character and see herself reflected in it unless they take the time to get invested in the book.
Trousers are a good start. This look is less likely to alienate the majority of the female audience and besides, more guys I know crushed on Rogue than Wonder Woman anyway and Rogue’s costumes always covered her completely from the neck down.
And after all of that, let’s get to that second point I mentioned;
Now all of her gold parts are now silver. Why are they silver? This seems like a somewhat arbitrary change to me, but fine, I’ll go with it. I prefer the gold look myself , but I think the important question to ask here on all points before getting all worked up about it is; ‘will this ruin my ability to enjoy the comics?’ I’m not a big Wonder Woman fan anyway, but even if I were, I’m pretty sure that it would not. The X-Men all changed their costumes a lot as time went on and it never ruined my enjoyment of the book, or the movies when the costumes portrayed didn’t fit in with my ideal versions of the characters.
CYBORG
And now we’ll talk about Cyborg, but not about his costume so much as his presence in this image. After all, Cyborg’s look has never been so iconic that changing it has been met with cries of blaspheme, so talking about his costume seems somewhat moot.
If I gather correctly, Cyborg is featured prominently here because in the rebooted world, Cyborg is meant to be the quintessential American hero. This seems to be the biggest change to continuity I’ve read about, not including occasions where writers are reverting to old status quos (such as Batgirl, but we’ll get to that later).
I don’t mind the character, although I’ve never much cared for cyborgs in general. Some point post 90s I got tired of the recycled ‘one-robot-eye’ aesthetic and longed for a simpler time when mechanically augmented people wore their metal bits on the inside ala the Six Million Dollar Man or the Bionic Woman. When it comes to characters who look like Cyborg, with that kind of schtick, I just can’t seem to care.
If you haven’t heard of Cyborg yourself, that’s because he’s sort of a B-Lister associated with the Teen Titans and he has a fairly inconsistent personality. This leads one to ask why the character might be risen to such prominence and well… now this is a tender subject that I hesitate to broach, but you sort of have to conclude that it comes down to race and the need for diversity in DC titles.
Actually, DC aren’t making any bones about it, they’re even releasing a new bat-title centring around Africa’s equivalent of Batman; Batwing.
I don’t have a problem with that. Like the late Dwayne Mcduffie said once said, (I’m too lazy to find the quote, so I’m paraphrasing) it’s not like fictional white characters are going to suffer from being out of a job if you give their spot in the Justice League to a fictional black guy. And as Scott McCloud once said (paraphrasing again), one of the most important ways our medium can progress is by opening our fictional worlds up to a wider audience by including characters that minorities and women can relate to.
Diversifying comics is an important step forward, ergo; it’s a good thing to give minority characters prominent roles in the DCU. I just worry that they may not have introduced this element carefully enough and Cyborg might come off as a fan-fiction style Mary Sue.
For comparison, let’s look at a minority character I really like, the somewhat unfortunately named Jon Stewart (a Green Lantern), and how he was introduced into a place of prominence within the separate DC universe shown in the Justice League cartoons.
Right at the beginning of the JLA cartoon, Stewart was there along with all of the other major characters in the series. You didn’t know much about him and although he’d appeared in the comics, he’d never been featured particularly prominently before. But he soon earned his place with his well defined, gruff, yet level-headed persona. By the end of the show’s run he seemed just as important to the JLA as Superman, Batman or Wonder Woman. That’s not an overstatement; his character was just handled very well. In terms of minority representation in superhero stories the character was a triumph that I’m sad to see wasn’t reflected so well in the comics.
I can’t help but think this Cyborg experiment might backfire, largely because the audience might be expected to suddenly accept that Cyborg is just awesome and everyone in the world knows it, rather than be allowed to come to that conclusion on their own, or see what lead up to it. Superman doesn’t need to prove himself because he’s far more iconic and we all know what he can do, but getting the readers to accept any other character as his equal requires some kind of build up.
I really hope I’m wrong and that they succeed in what they’re doing with the character. This is just my first impression, remember I don’t have any insider info and I’m a little behind on my DC comics stuff. If you think I’m way off the mark, please respond and let me know.
BATGIRL
Barbara Gordon is apparently ditching the wheelchair and once again donning the cape and cowl to resume her crime fighting career, leaving any paraplegic fans of the Oracle character wishing they were so lucky, I should imagine.
I don’t know why this bugs me so much, but it does. For those of you who don’t understand the significance of this decision, allow me to give you a little back story…
The character of Barbara Gordon was the daughter of Police Commissioner Gordon in the Batman Mythos and she is famous for being the original Batgirl. This went on until Alan Moore got hold of her in the 80s with his acclaimed Joker origin story ‘The Killing Joke’. Barbara Gordon suffered a bullet to the spine in that story that left her confined to a wheelchair ever after (if this comes as a spoiler, you probably shouldn’t be reading this article). In a bid to keep her relevant to the DCU, her role was ultimately adjusted from Batgirl to more of a mentor role to future replacement Batgirls and DC Heroines. She also took up the codename ‘Oracle’ and basically became a female hacker version of Charles Xavier.
Barbara never really won me over as a character (not, for instance, in the same way the new Batwoman has). I never particularly cared if she was Batgirl or if she was Oracle, but I do believe that having firmly established her as Oracle, there’s no going back. If they’d chosen to retcon or backtrack on Moore’s decision to cripple her closer to the point where it was first printed, it would have been instantly more forgiveable, because it’d be instantly forgettable. But instead they’ve taken pains to establish the character as a handi-capable asset to the DC heroes. They showed her overcoming adversity and adapting to her new life admirably.
I believe that her story sent an important message to handicapped readers that we’re now seeing snatched away. It’s equivalent to giving a character a 30 year battle with a real-life terminal disease only to suddenly say; ‘nope, it’s cured…’ It just seems insensitive to the people who really suffer from it.
I mentioned Xavier earlier as a comparison and funnily enough he was also cured of his inability to walk back in my favourite X-Men run ever (New X-Men by Grant Morrison). I’m bringing this up because I guess I might be showing a little hypocrisy here. I commended that similar decision. In my defence, I think that the situation was different. Xavier’s paralysis never really made much sense to me to begin with.
It’s because Xavier’s immediate world is filled with all manner of mutants, aliens and scientists, some of whom were healers, or super-scientists, or had metal arms and legs. I always figured his life was so full of such explanations that somebody might have figured out a way to fix his spinal injury. If anything, the writers had to do back-flips to explain why that hadn’t already happened. Also I get the feeling that it’s not such a kick in the teeth to the wheelchair-bound readers who might be invested in the character, because X-Men (especially at the time) was all about futuristic science-fiction. It was more about what might be possible someday than what is possible now (even though it doesn’t employ any real science).
Maybe this is a dodgy rationale, but it’s one that formed naturally for me, without forcing it. Although Batman shares his world with similar such innovations and powers as the ones you’d find in the X-Men/Marvel world, his title tends to focus more exclusively on a small gritty corner of it where fantastical powers are reserved for villains and all the heroes tend to fight with are ropes, boomerangs and the occasional low-level James Bondy gadgets. You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone in the ‘Batman family’ with any significant abilities beyond those of human beings (besides a ridiculously advanced knowledge of martial arts and free running).
So curing Barbara seems less than conducive to the tone of the bat-titles… and worse still, I don’t think that’s even what they’re doing. I’m reasonably certain they’re just writing the bullet that crippled her out of continuity and saying that the paralysis and the Oracle thing never happened at all.
But, for all my moaning about how this might affect one demographic, I feel that I understand what the Batgirl-Writer Gail Simone’s counter-argument will probably be. After all, she was the one who coined the term ‘WOMEN IN REFRIGERATORS’ back in the 90s, after noticing the popular trend in comics of killing, raping, or physically destroying female characters and never letting them rise back to their former position of prominence.
For instance, Batman’s back was broken by Bane in the 90s and he healed up to resume his role as Batman, rather than become an Oracle type mentor to the next Batman. He’s also endured a great many other hardships (including death), and managed to find a way to cheat every one of them, as is more often the case with male characters. However, even though Batman can survive all that, most female characters rather often end up becoming a cautionary tale designed to progress the male hero’s journey.
I agree that this imbalance exists. This is a disappointing trope of comic books and that hinders the industry’s ability to accumulate and maintain a female fan-base. Maybe returning Barbara Gordon to her costumed role is a step forward in that regard, but I would argue that she’d already transcended that role when she became the Oracle. She certainly seemed far more useful to numerous characters in the Bat-corner of the DCU.
THE COMIC SHOP ARGUMENT
DC comics have also announced that accompanying the reboot, they will begin releasing their entire line digitally on the day of release. There is a very real concern trickling through the comic-book retail community that this may spell the beginning of the end for their businesses.
Having worked in Book Retail and Multimedia Retail, I’ve seen the virtual death of those industries as the decline of physical media made it ever more difficult to turn a profit, I have to say, I’m a little worried that comic stores are going to go the way of the Pterodactyl. After all, they’re already struggling and have been for some time.
There’s an argument amongst optimistic comic store employees that current customer fetish for single issues won’t ever go away, but in this age where people are growing more and more obsessed with their tablets and smart phones, I really wouldn’t be so sure. For instance, I’ve always been a fan of physical media and I’ve always had a collector’s mentality, but as I mentioned before I gave up on buying single issues for space reasons and I also recently invested in a Kindle to replace my book collection.
Oh, I rebelled against the Kindle’s charms to begin with. I never thought I’d find something I love more than a hardcover novel and the smell of print… but half an hour with a Kindle convinced me of how wrong I was. In the short months since my wife bought me it I’ve read more novels than I have in the past six years (including that time I spend working in the aforementioned bookshop). I’ve heard people say the same thing about magazines with regards to the Ipad. Are comics really that far away?
In the last decade we’ve seen music stores bow out to Itunes and we’ve seen bookstores disappear almost entirely, first because of Amazon.com and the final nail in the coffin had to be the rise of the Kindle Store. Can Comic Stores really be the only kind of store to survive the switch to digital media? Personally I doubt it.
To me it seems inevitable.
THE CONCLUSION:
I don’t hate DC’s decision to reboot. I like some elements, I’m on the fence about others. As with all change we’re bound to find things we like about it and things we hate about it. That’s just the way of the world, I’m afraid, not everything will always go your way.
Frankly, they get a tip of the hat for shaking things up and addressing some of the primary concerns many people have had with DC for the longest time. Time and time again I’ve heard people say how hard they’ve found it trying to get into DC comics, believing that the old continuity is far too convoluted. Clearly this won’t be a problem for much longer.
I was once so disappointed with the infamous One More Day arc that rebooted Spider-Man’s marriage to Mary Jane, that I gave up reading Spider-Man entirely for years. It wasn’t until last Christmas that I picked up the books that followed and found them to be some of the most unexpectedly enjoyable Marvel comics I’ve read since childhood.
So to all you outraged fans, I can only suggest you give it a fair shot before you decide that it’s a failure.
That’s all for now,
-MVB
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