DC relaunch Overview

So DC has officially announced their entire 52 initial titles. Thus far we've got a crap ton of really ugly costumes, a bunch of men, black and white running around, and a few white women here and there. The majority of the teams seem to be run by men and we've got a bunch of really stupid decisions. Look does ANYONE think OMAC or Frankenstein Agent of Shade are going to be major titles? Seriously? I'm also struck by the fact that they've taken out the JSA. I mean DC's greatest team has been removed from their line up all together. That's very sad to me that they couldn't have found a place for them in the first run if they plan to do a JSA at all, but could find a place for throw away characters like Bat-Wing (Seriously, the character has appeared TWICE in comics and he gets a title over characters who have appeared for YEARS and have a huge fan base?).

From a lot of the titles that are sticking around, it just seems like a typical transfer from new writer and artist. Some they didn't even do that. They just shuffled. We'll see how different things actually are, but on the surface? Not a whole hell of a lot.

I have major mixed feelings about this Relaunch. I think some of it will be good, but I think there is just a LOT of wasted time and energy in this relaunch. There are a lot of wasted titles that just don't need to be around. Why are we giving losers like Blue Beetle, whose title has failed, getting another chance? And why is the line up relatively monochromatic? Why don't we have more Latino/Latina characters? and there appears to be only ONE Asian character in the whole batch and she may not even be Asian at all. Of course, there are only a couple female minorities at all in this new line up and women have not gained any new titles, just new directions (I'm thinking of Catwoman as a new direction for Gotham City Sirens btw).

The last thing is the insanely frustrating is the creative teams. I was all excited about Hawk and Dove for instance then I see Rob Liefeld is doing the art. Are they TRYING to kill this title? He's a horrible hack. I remember when he did Teen Titans with the new Hawk and Dove. Sales went up for the initial issue then drastically dropped below previous levels for the second issue only to return back to normal right after that. Gail Simone was the writer, so you know it wasn't about the writing. The issues were just about unreadable because Liefeld's art took away from the story and made it IMPOSSIBLE to figure out what was going on. Not to mention that Domino magically appeared as a DC villain. Then we give New Guardians to Tony Bedard, who cannot write interesting women to save his life. Every time he does a title with women, they come out flat and boring. then there is a lot of Vertigo writers suddenly doing Superhero titles, which could be good or bad and the most dreadful thing of all, Smallville writers. Smallville, one of the single worst TV shows ever and had NOTHING to do with comics, are going to be writing comics? So we'll get teen angsty drama for no real reason. Joy rapture and bliss. I don't want to read comic after comic of who Kara is sleeping with or dating. There is also a lot of title, I've never heard of, so I don't know if I want to read them or not.

I think this whole thing could be a massive failure and I don't think it is going to be a runaway success. It's mostly going to be a mixed bag and all the existing titles will return to their pre-change levels (except maybe Action b/c of Morrison writing it) and the new titles will settle down to somewhere in the middle to low end, just like a lot of other comics.