"DC Universe: Rebirth" #1 Contains a Surprising and Likely Controversial Crossover

[cxranger]

Just read Rebirth, after managing to avoid spoilers succesfully. Doc Manhattan is the perfect thing to make me care about DC again. Geoff Johns accomplished his mission here.

Exactly. Job well done. I supported the Nu52, but became jaded with a lot of the moves. Rebirth has got me very excited for new future.

[NeonZ]

"But Moore used a lot of characters in his LXG saga, and he used their REAL names!" Yes, but that's a different context. Moore used the LXG stories as a vast and extremely complex essay about the history of pop culture and the society which was tied to such culture. That's why there are stereotypical Chinese people in one of the stories - that's the way Chinese were intended at that time. When he makes James Bond a mysoginist douche, he is not saying "I can give a sequel to James Bond's adventures", but "In the old stories Bond was mysoginistic because society and the representation of sex were different; I want to emphasize this aspect". Also, the vast majority of the characters who appear in LXG are universally known (nobody could think that Moore is presenting himself as R. L. Stevenson's artistic successor because he uses Mr Hyde) and 99% were created in a different century - the distance between Moore and the original creators is huge, and in a lot of cases they have already been the focus of other pastiche novels.

Bond isn't even a public domain character yet, and that didn't stop Moore from attempting to use him in his story. Although obviously Johns' writing is more superficial, Dr.Manhattan here is being explicitly used as a tool for a thematic message about the influence of Watchmen in later works, not just "the continuing adventures of the Watchmen". In fact, we don't even really see him. The fact that someone from "Watchmen" was behind it all is more relevant than the character himself - at least as far as Rebirth goes.

Of course, I guess one could raise a criticism about how, if the intent is complaining about creators taking the wrong influence from Watchmen, then using a character from Watchmen itself doesn't line up perfectly with the message, since it implies a criticism towards Watchmen itself. But that's another matter. I don't think anyone is arguing that Johns is as good as Moore at his best.

[C_Miller]

Whether the Watchmen is a masterpiece of literature or pure garbage is subjective. The majority of opinion is that it is a very good book, however that opinion is no greater than the opinion that it is garbage. It is all opinion and subjective. What is not opinion is Moore is very rude with his comments about other people. Therefore it is my opinion that he doesn't deserve special treatment just because he wrote something many people like and the characters can be used again, no problem.

Roman Polanski drugged and raped a 13 year old girl and that doesn't prevent him from being a visionary director. Albert Einstein regularly cheated on his wife while maintaining a list of rules for her to follow in order to remain married to him, yet we still respect him for his role as the Father of Modern Theoretical Physics. H.P. Lovecraft was a racist, but he is a pioneer in his field. Horror would not be what it is today without him.

If you ignore all the works of people who aren't necessarily the best people, you are leaving out some wonderful work. And let's be honest, Moore being shitty to people on the internet really isn't on the spectrum of bad things. Let's gain some perspective.

[C_Miller]

I kind of hope he was involved as far back as Flashpoint... Because that story NEVER made any sense to me. Considering that Barry's mother getting killed WAS the retcon, STOPPING it should never have had any effect at all on the timeline... that whole process and then leading into nu52 was so flawed from the beginning for me...

having an all powerful guy tinker with things to 'make things better' makes a LOT more sense then what we'd been given before.

Agreed and I LOVE that idea. Just not comfortable with the all powerful tinkerer they chose.

[AUScowboy]

Yep, it stinks of desperation pretty bad IMO. Funny thing is, i genuinely loved almost every other aspect of this. A poster above said it, between JL and this, us DC fans have had some great comics (and specifically ART!) lately..

[Bluebolt1967]

Agreed and I LOVE that idea. Just not comfortable with the all powerful tinkerer they chose.

I agree - I think Rebirth is a good idea and a well-told story but I'm not sure who Johns could have chosen as the culprit from the DCU proper. I'm only aware of about 60% or so of the various DC characters, so maybe there are characters out in DC land that were powerful enough to do this, but Manhattan definitely has the abilities to do it, probably along with Franklin Richards. But also, by using Manhattan in this story, it also allowed Johns to make some meta-commentary about how Watchmen was kind of the corollary of the traditional DCU - very dark, adult, serious, etc.

Sorry, I'm still just cheesing from seeing the Atom in costume again

[Myskin]

Bond isn't even a public domain character yet, and that didn't stop Moore from attempting to use him in his story. Although obviously Johns' writing is more superficial, Dr.Manhattan here is being explicitly used as a tool for a thematic message about the influence of Watchmen in later works, not just "the continuing adventures of the Watchmen". In fact, we don't even really see him. The fact that someone from "Watchmen" was behind it all is more relevant than the character himself - at least as far as Rebirth goes.

Of course, I guess one could raise a criticism about how, if the intent is complaining about creators taking the wrong influence from Watchmen, then using a character from Watchmen itself doesn't line up perfectly with the message, since it implies a criticism towards Watchmen itself. But that's another matter. I don't think anyone is arguing that Johns is as good as Moore at his best.

The second half of your reply is the answer to the first one. Johns can go meta with the Watchmen characters as much as he wants, but I'd bet one million dollar that, all in all, it will just be a Crisis-like story with a simplistic view on what Watchmen meant.

But I'll tell you what, Johns could present his story in at least one way which I'd personally find acceptable: he could work on allusions, without revealing the nature of Oz or the mysterious vill-err, antagonist. I mean, if Oz kept saying that he comes from a world which he brought peace to because he made something horrible, and Johns NEVER openly said that he is Ozymandias, it would be way more interesting, and elegant, from a narrative point of view. Are the characters from Watchmen? Aren't they? I think that the majority of the readers would understand the references, and Johns would make something Watchmen-related without misinterpreting the nature of of the original story. It would be a more sophisticated storytelling, but again, I really don't think that Johns will do that.

[Darth Kal-el]

Roman Polanski drugged and raped a 13 year old girl and that doesn't prevent him from being a visionary director. Albert Einstein regularly cheated on his wife while maintaining a list of rules for her to follow in order to remain married to him, yet we still respect him for his role as the Father of Modern Theoretical Physics. H.P. Lovecraft was a racist, but he is a pioneer in his field. Horror would not be what it is today without him.

If you ignore all the works of people who aren't necessarily the best people, you are leaving out some wonderful work. And let's be honest, Moore being shitty to people on the internet really isn't on the spectrum of bad things. Let's gain some perspective.

Its not about the kinda person Moore is, it's about a story and characters DC owns and can use however they like. There is nothing ethically or morally wrong with using the properties you own to create new stories. But some reason certain fans disagree with the Watchmen characters being used in new stories because they consider it a masterpiece and it's disrespectful to use them. But for me that makes zero sense because they are just characters they own. They are no different from the characters they were based on in terms of availability, so this respect argument makes zero rationale sense, especially adding on that Moore has wiped his hands of the industry and was never going to touch them again. DC has waited long enough

[Coin Biter]

Roman Polanski drugged and raped a 13 year old girl and that doesn't prevent him from being a visionary director. Albert Einstein regularly cheated on his wife while maintaining a list of rules for her to follow in order to remain married to him, yet we still respect him for his role as the Father of Modern Theoretical Physics. H.P. Lovecraft was a racist, but he is a pioneer in his field. Horror would not be what it is today without him.

If you ignore all the works of people who aren't necessarily the best people, you are leaving out some wonderful work. And let's be honest, Moore being shitty to people on the internet really isn't on the spectrum of bad things. Let's gain some perspective.

And it's not as if Moore doesn't have a point in many of his Jeremiads. People treat his public utterances as being crazy rants, but if you look into the substance of what he says he usually makes some extremely telling points. Here he is on the Watchmen film adaptation, before it was made:

It's a completely pointless idea, because Watchmen, at least in my mind, wasn't about a bunch of slightly dark superheroes in a slightly dark version of our modern world. It was about the storytelling techniques, and the way that me and Dave were altering the range of what it was possible to do in comics; this new way that we'd stumbled upon of telling a comic book story.
The plot was more or less incidental. All of its elements were properly considered, but it's not the fact that Watchmen told a dark story about a few superheroes that makes it a book that is still read and remembered today. It's the way that it's told and how it made ingenious use of the comic strip medium.

We're only one issue into rebirth, so time will tell whether the story only uses the most superficial elements of Watchmen.

Moore doesn't like the way the industry is still an effective duopoly, some 40 years after he started. He doesn't like the way in which comic book works are insensitively cannibalised for adaptations and constantly recycled. He doesn't like the way in which the comic book industry is dependent on the work of creators which it then treats with disrespect. He doesn't like the way in which the market is superhero-obsessed. There is nothing crazy or remarkable about this. All of these things are, of course, inherent in the commercial model of the comic industry. But Moore isn't obliged to agree with that model. He may have signed up to it, because it was the main game then in town, but so did Kirby and many other creators who came to criticise the industry.

And considering that half of the comments we read on the internet about comics consist of searing criticsms about how the Big Two are run, I wonder why people expect creators to be more restrained.

Moore has been rather hilariously bracketed with Stephanie Meyer in this thread. Well, there is one notable difference: her work was published in a form/industry which allotted her some measure of control.

[colonyofcells]

In the past, I have requested for a prime earth Watchmen so I do not find the use of the Watchmen controversial but just business as usual.

[phantom1592]

In the past, I have requested for a prime earth Watchmen so I do not find the use of the Watchmen controversial but just business as usual.

This is by far the easiest answer out there. The Watchmen that Moore wrote are still out there in there own little world that Ozzy tried to make perfect (personally I'd like to see a 10 year sequel to see if the peace held... human nature says there's no way it would have...) However this version of Doc Manhatten is Earth-17's version of the Watchmen... similar but different enough to justify any writer variations.

Watchmen was a specific story with a specific ending, and it altered much of the world around it... but so have a LOT of stories. The murder of Jason Todd, Crisis on Infinite Earths ending of the multiverse... Barry Allen's death and the end of the Silver age....

Everything that was written to be 'permanent' gets new life breathed back into it.... and controversy stirs up.

[Myskin]

Here is a very long commentary about the issue
http://comicsalliance.com/dc-univers...dtable-review/

I haven't entirely read it yet, but I really like this part:

Andrew: Here’s what I find confusing. They’re selling us “hope”, but what I’m seeing is nostalgia, and for anyone for whom the good old days weren’t very good, nostalgia is the opposite of hope. Nostalgia is a sort of withering death. And if writer Geoff Johns wants to write hopeful stories, hasn’t he been a lead writer and a DC executive since long before the New 52? What was stopping him writing hope in Justice League, or Green Lantern?
Elle: Yeah, he writes in this book about how friendship and optimism were removed from the DC Universe by a sinister force, but that was him. He wrote the Justice League book that launched the New 52 with a team made up of strangers who yelled at each other and postured like jerks.

[colonyofcells]

The only controversy is the quarrel between alan moore and dc, but there is nothing controversial about the fictional watchmen characters. Dc also had many years of quarrels and controversy with the superman creators. It is normal for dc to try to make more money out of teams like watchmen, authority, etc. Dc also had many years of quarrels and controversy with fawcett, the owner of captain marvel but now captain marvel is part of prime earth. I wanted a prime earth Watchmen for Batman vs Ozymandias. Maybe Ozymandias is one of the 3 Jokers.

[Will J.]

Here is a very long commentary about the issue
http://comicsalliance.com/dc-univers...dtable-review/

I haven't entirely read it yet, but I really like this part:

Thanks for posting this.

It's an interesting piece that makes some valid points, I think.

[phantom1592]

The only controversy is the quarrel between alan moore and dc, but there is nothing controversial about the fictional watchmen characters. Dc also had many years of quarrels and controversy with the superman creators. It is normal for dc to try to make more money out of teams like watchmen, authority, etc. Dc also had many years of quarrels and controversy with fawcett, the owner of captain marvel but now captain marvel is part of prime earth. I wanted a prime earth Watchmen for Batman vs Ozymandias. Maybe Ozymandias is one of the 3 Jokers.

I'd love a Spectre/Dr. Manhatten battle myself...