No other medium loves reboots and retcons quite like comics. And because of the wonders of comic book science, writers have a variety of glorious tools to go about shattering continuity at their whim. Time travel, parallel realities, Doom-Bots, clones, or my personal favorite, actual deals with the devil. But DC has decided to take rebooting to an unprecedented scale, restarting their entire line of comics from the scratch. In the wake of Flashpoint, we’re going to see the DC universe reborn and filled with younger takes on classic heroes. Geoff John’s obsession with the Silver Age has grown so wildly out of control he’s changed the comic book timeline just so he can bring it all back. Come on buddy, you’re bordering on self-parody here.
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What makes this slightly disheartening is that DC has already pressed the “redo” button more than once. In addition to the endless list of retcons (try asking someone what Hawkman’s origin is), the whole purpose of the Crisis events was to streamline continuity and fix things permanently. And so many classic stories become effectively non-cannon, no longer part of the main continuity. We might even see some retellings of classic stories.
What’s even worse is that, in the short term at least, this will boost sales. Dozens of new Issue #1’s? Whether or not this transition will stick is up for debate, but DC’s sales will skyrocket with these issues I mean, damn, I’m ranting about how much I dislike this change and I’m going to buy some of these. The reboot undeniably shakes up the current status quo. Even though change isn’t necessarily good or bad, at the very least it’s something different. I’d be interested in reading the classic Justice League get together again in a whole new world, and am curious to see the future holds for Green Lantern. Hopefully we’ll get some cool stories out of this. Just keep in mind though, this isn’t the first time things have been retconned in comics, and it won’t be the last.
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