Superman loses his shorts

DC is rebooting its continuity in September and Superman's costume will not include the red underwear on the outside.

http://movies.yahoo.com/news/usmovies.thehollywoodreporter.com/superman-getting-new-costume-action-comics-relaunch?nc

 

DC sure knows how to shake things up.

 

Breitbart has photos.

 

There are more significant changes, such as Barbara Gordon regaining the use of her legs and becoming Batgirl again.

 

Nice...

 

I think if all the artists on these 52 "new" books are able to keep on schedule - as DC has been promising - it will actually be more incredible than an alien traveling to Earth to become Superman.

 

I haven't purchased a comic in 20+ years, so I'm not up on all the comings and goings. But what's the deal that both DC and Marvel are doing? DC is rebooting everything back to No. 1, Marvel is killing off characters and dissolving the X Men. Is the industry in such a shape that they have to blow it up and start over?

 

Well, DC is a clear No. 2 to Marvel, so I can see them wanting to make big changes. It's just that they do it far too often. There's a multiverse. Then there is just one universe. Then there were 52 of them. Now they're starting over. I've lost track (though I'm not a big DC guy).

Marvel doesn't do that. They retcon plenty of things, but I don't think they have actually rebooted the entire Marvel universe. They may create an entirely new line with a new history (Ultimate Marvel books), but the original one remains intact.

This is why I hated One More Day (when they magically undid Peter Parker/Spider-Man's marriage to Mary Jane). Making big changes is fine. Just don't undo what we read. To me, that basically shits on the readers who actually bought those books.

I doubt the X-Men are going to be completely dissolved. Sounds more like there will be two factions going their separate ways. Of course, they have broken the team up before. This is not new.

The thing is, one big, unified mutant family cuts down on the drama. It was never going to last. The idea, as I have read it, is to have the conflict between Wolverine and Cyclops drive things forward just as Xavier and Magneto used to.

I'm willing to give it a shot and see where it goes. It is certainly better than going back in time and undoing shit.

 

I think that's the thing that made me quit reading comics years ago, all the alternate titles/story lines. You'd have Detective Comics/Batman/Batman & Robin all going at the same time with different things happening, for example. Didn't they have a run in the 80s of The Amazing Spider-Man, Spectacular Spider-Man and just plain Spider-Man all going at once? I can live with having a, for example, X-Men series and a separate Wolverine title going at the same time, but don't have two or three different Wolverine issues all at once with different things going on. Pick one, make it canon and leave it alone.

Then, you set in to the alternate universe crap where about everyone has been killed and came back (Super Man, Steve Rogers) or had part of their life undone (Spider-Man marriage), etc.

 

I've bought a total of about 5 new-issue comic books in the last 25 years and this is why.

DC reboots its whole universe about every year and a half.

I suspect this may have something to do with the long-running lawsuit between WB/DC and the heirs of the creators of Superman.

The current operative court ruling is (essentially) that as of 2013, the heirs retain rights to the original "creation version" of Superman (i.e. the original Action #1 uniform, the name Clark Kent, the girlfriend Lois Lane, the being born on planet Krypton) and WB/DC owns the rest (all the storyline additions which came in after about 1941. They can call a character 'Superman,' he can wear a more modern version of the uniform, but they can't use any of of the 'creation version' plot points unless they cut the heirs a check).

My guess is WB/DC may have just said "fuck it" and decided to reboot him with a completely new origin. Maybe getting bit by a radioactive spider.

 

Is any of this stuff ever really new? Hell, they are doing the "Magneto is reformed and joins the X-Men" thing again, too.

 

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