The New DC

You know, two to three weeks ago, I talked about how I was going to talk about the DC Reboot instead of Innistrad, but then I rambled about politics for a week like I was on a bender and then did a whole Prisoner thing that was totally awesome, but didn't much mention Grant Morrison or The Justice League very much?

It's all part of my fully intentional air of enigmatic, unknown mystery where I—

...so...shiny...

I don't have these comics yet. When I got in from offshore, I had my subscriptions in. "Teen Titans" #100 and another, which I actually assumed was my "Batman & Robin." I opened the second one immediately, hungry to read anything that wasn't Teen Titans. It was "Teen Titans #99." I never wished for Hayden Christensen's phone number before, but my inner soul cried out for someone to voice my echoing denial of the harsh realities of life.

In the absence of any good comics to read, I'm doing a quick rundown covering the train wreck of this reboot in the form of the popular narrative backed by my response.

PN-Batwing is a stupid idea that's stupid and also DC are racists for making one Batman to take care of all of Africa, even though it's a heterogeneous continent and not a damned city.

VV-This comic is apparently pretty good.

PN-"Hawk and Dove" sold out.

VV-Because despite all of the critical acclaim and oohs and ahs and deconstructions and symbols and Grant Morrison stuff, people want to read Rob Liefield comics. They want to read them a lot. Fuck you, those guys exist and they speak with their wallets. No, I don't know anyone who'd rather read Liefeld's work, but that's the problem with anecdotal evidence.

PN-"Stormwatch" will be about Midnighter and Apollo falling in love for the first time.

VV-Christ, I hope not. It's not "Fruits Basket," It's fucking "Stormwatch"! Apollo and Midnighter are members of a team. They have an engineer, a Jenny Quantum, The Martian friggin' Manhunter(Professional BAMF), and I think Travis Tritt and Keith Urban, so I'm  much more interested in seeing how The Engineer gets along with the guy who cut "Tell Me I Was Dreaming."

PN-"Wonder Woman" gets worse sales than "Secret Six" and other good books, but keeps getting published because it's available. If an region only has so much shelf space for comics, they're going to stock the well-known Wonder Woman, not Secret Six or Batgirl.

VV-Digital distribution will solve this...if that's really the case. Odds are, people will read the familiar shit that's "Wonder Woman" rather than dine of the unknown steak that's anything good.

PN-You can see The Red Hood's junk in the first-pass cover of Red Hood and The Outsiders.

VV-If you call that junk, yeah.

PN-Grant Morrison's Action Comics has an immature, impulsive, not-as-powerful Superman who fights corruption.

VV-Sounds legit.

PN-"Justice League" has is superheroic prick-waving.

VV-An ensemble piece should show how heroes' powers compliment one another. Hey, you can also cheat and have two of them working together already.  Consider some thematically-linked heroes  working one side of a larger story while another group is working the other side. A few issues down the road, they can cross paths with one another and do your obligatory, masturbatory heroes-fight-then-team-up bullshit before they form the Justice League. But hey, that's all learned from running RPGs. Maybe bad RPG assemblies are good comic book assemblies. 

I mean, anything is possible. Maybe hats taste great on sandwiches.

PN-"Blackhawks"/"I, Vampire"/"Deathstroke" realistic stories set in a superhero universe.

VV-Yeah, good luck with that thematic mismatch.

PN-Savage Hawkman and Aquaman

VV-See last answer.

PN-Teen Titans still exists.

VV-No. I'm in and will continue to be an a deep, comforting denial about this.

 
Unless it somehow becomes this, which I would watch and also carry babies for.
 Amy Reeder. She's awesome.

PN-By returning Barbra Gordan to Batgirl, they're removing a handicap presence from comics.

VV-Yes, and there's no reason for it. While I haven't been able to explain to my friends why—when the universe lets people like Bruce Wayne just recover from being paraplegic—it's important that someone act as someone that comic readers with perceived self-limitations can identify with. They kept telling me that if Barbra Gordon could cure herself, she would have, which seems to pretty obliviously miss the point, which as near as I can articulate is that she, and by extension people in her situation, must live with things the way they are instead of the way she wants things to be.