Examining "Rebirth's" Treatment of Legacy & Promise of a Less "Grimdark" DC Universe

[Batowl]

Yeah, but one of those was Pandora, and nobody cares about her anyway. One of the others is Superwoman, and whatever, she'll be back eventually.

Crime syndicate are dead, they seem to be johns babys for storytelling. They was always rare villians to use anyway, too powerful.

[Pinsir]

I wonder where the idea that 'non-grimdark equals Silver Age nostalgia' comes from.

Because that seems to be the standard for what people think is not grimdark. I don't like excessive gore, death, violence, etc and I've read the majority of the good New 52 corpus, including some titles from the 'Edge' brand when that was a thing. I didn't find any of them to be 'grimdark,' or even terrible violent. Yet, ever since I started reading comics that has been the number one complaint I've heard. I just can't help the internal barometers that people use to judge if something is to dark is off. Either something is Silver Age-esque or its grimdark.

From what I know of DC's 2001-2011 era I think this is probably true, that stories were being written to be intentionally depressing, dark, and hopeless.

[GlennSimpson]

Because that seems to be the standard for what people think is not grimdark. I don't like excessive gore, death, violence, etc and I've read the majority of the good New 52 corpus, including some titles from the 'Edge' brand when that was a thing. I didn't find any of them to be 'grimdark,' or even terrible violent. Yet, ever since I started reading comics that has been the number one complaint I've heard. I just can't help the internal barometers that people use to judge if something is to dark is off. Either something is Silver Age-esque or its grimdark.

From what I know of DC's 2001-2011 era I think this is probably true, that stories were being written to be intentionally depressing, dark, and hopeless.

I think both terms are exaggerations. I think the people who are accused of liking "grimdark" just want to see plausibility and consequences in the melodrama. This is a dangerous business these people are engaged in, they ought to get hurt sometimes.

[SmokeMonster]

I don't understand this New 52 = grimdark thing, especially since DCYou.

Granted I came into comics with the New 52 and only read the critically acclaimed stuff.

[colonyofcells]

It was thanks to the New 52 reboots and not Rebirth that we got back Ted Kord and Sue Dibny. Rebirth is just a work of fiction and I would not take the promises of a more joyful universe seriously.

[GlennSimpson]

I don't understand this New 52 = grimdark thing, especially since DCYou.

Granted I came into comics with the New 52 and only read the critically acclaimed stuff.

I will confess that one month, probably a year or so into the new52, I took a full month's worth of new52 books and checked and every one of them had blood being spilled in some form or another, or at least most of them.

Not sure if that is or isn't excessive.

[colonyofcells]

New 52 did the right thing in banning legacy to attract new customers but unfortunately, dc did not do a good job of looking for new customers. So dc had no choice but to return the legacy heroes who the old customers liked.

[Doctor Know]

I think it would be easier to believe that if same week Johns (JL50 + Rebirth) didn't kill something like 5 characters.

I thought the same thing. Johns just killed the entire Crime Syndicate, Anti-Monitor, Darkseid, Myrina, Metron and Pandora, and he's now promising less "grimdark", when he himself is a person who perpetuates it.

Casual reminder this is the man who turned Superboy Prime into a mass murdering villain, and brought him back several times (Infinite Crisis, Sinestro Corps, Legion of 3 World and Blackest Night) to cull the herd of various DC characters. Not to mention all the pointless deaths during his tenure on Teen Titans, Blackest Night, Flash Rebirth and his recently concluded Justice League run. Also Johns gave Green Lanterns to the ability to use lethal force at will.

I remember being promised a more hopeful TT run after Graduation Day, and look the bodies that were dropped.

Donna - Graduation Day
Lilith - Graduation Day
Indigo - Outsiders
Pantha - Infinite Crisis
Bushido - Infinite Crisis
Kid Wildebeest - Infinite Crisis
Connor - Infinite Crisis
Bart - One Year Later/Full Throttle
Osiris - 52
Kid Frankenstein - World War III
Terra II - World War III
Bombshell - Titans East
Duela Dent - Countdown to Final Crisis
Powerboy - Titans vol 2
Wendy and Marvin - Changing of the Guard
Molecule - Terror Titans
Kid Devil - Child's Play
Aqualad/Tempest - Blackest Night
Hawk/Holly - Blackest Night
Damage - Blackest Night




Hope and optimism from Johns? HA! He's just as culpable as others have been in the dark turn comics have taken. Now he's blaming Watchmen for the grim dark nature of comics of today. He's trying to sell a bridge, and I'm not buying.

[Dataweaver]

What about the wildstorm characters?

What about them? They fit in the DCU about as well as Milestone and Red Circle did; and the sooner they're pulled out of Prime Earth and put back on Earth 50, or otherwise given an Earth of their own, the better.

[colonyofcells]

Both the wildstorm characters and quality characters are probably still on earth 0. As for seeing less blood, we will probably see more disintegrations.

[GlennSimpson]

I thought the same thing. Johns just killed the entire Crime Syndicate, Anti-Monitor, Darkseid, Myrina, Metron and Pandora, and he's now promising less "grimdark", when he himself is a person who perpetuates it.

Casual reminder this is the man who turned Superboy Prime into a mass murdering villain, and brought him back several times (Infinite Crisis, Sinestro Corps, Legion of 3 World and Blackest Night) to cull the herd of various DC characters. Not to mention all the pointless deaths during his tenure on Teen Titans, Blackest Night, Flash Rebirth and his recently concluded Justice League run. Also Johns gave Green Lanterns to the ability to use lethal force at will.

I remember being promised a more hopeful TT run after Graduation Day, and look the bodies that were dropped.

Donna - Graduation Day
Lilith - Graduation Day
Indigo - Outsiders
Pantha - Infinite Crisis
Bushido - Infinite Crisis
Kid Wildebeest - Infinite Crisis
Connor - Infinite Crisis
Bart - One Year Later/Full Throttle
Osiris - 52
Kid Frankenstein - World War III
Terra II - World War III
Bombshell - Titans East
Duela Dent - Countdown to Final Crisis
Powerboy - Titans vol 2
Wendy and Marvin - Changing of the Guard
Molecule - Terror Titans
Kid Devil - Child's Play
Aqualad/Tempest - Blackest Night
Hawk/Holly - Blackest Night
Damage - Blackest Night




Hope and optimism from Johns? HA! He's just as culpable as others have been in the dark turn comics have taken. Now he's blaming Watchmen for the grim dark nature of comics of today. He's trying to sell a bridge, and I'm not buying.

For what it's worth, I don't think anything he has done has implied that he hasn't been just as dark as everybody else. He's just saying, as of Rebirth #1 (which happens after JL #50), that DC is going to try to lighten up a bit.

It's like the people who day "DC is admitting they made a horrible mistake with the new52". No, they are just admitting it might not have been as good as it could have been. That doesn't make it bad or a failure.

[Tim Pilotus]

The inclusion of Wildstorm into the very origins of the DC Universe felt unearned to me. They told me Wildstorm was a keystone to the New 52 version but didn't really do a great job of showing me much less making me feel like replacing something on the order of 7 decades of building a coherent origin of the universe and many of the pre-existing relationships were worth swapping out for Wildstorm characters.

They ended up feeling like a lot of johnny-come-latelies and then finally everything with a Wildstorm character felt toxic to me and a mark of everything that had gone wrong with the DCU.

Not to mention every single attempt to create a solo title or title heavily associated with Wildstorm amounting to pre-existing sales levels--Wildstorm still sold about as well as Wildstorm sold--even after the inclusion into the DCU. They made Wildstorm a lynchpin and then it seemed like not enough people wanted them but they were stuck with them because they were cooked into the New 52 DNA. It made it easy to reject the entire universe as a matter of course.

[colonyofcells]

The wildstorm characters will probably show up after justice society and Legion. The grimmer Wildstorm characters can also be used as villains against the more joyful non wildstorm heroes.

[Lee Stone]

For what it's worth, I don't think anything he has done has implied that he hasn't been just as dark as everybody else. He's just saying, as of Rebirth #1 (which happens after JL #50), that DC is going to try to lighten up a bit.

It's like the people who day "DC is admitting they made a horrible mistake with the new52". No, they are just admitting it might not have been as good as it could have been. That doesn't make it bad or a failure.

Yeah, and character deaths don't necessarily equal grimdark either.
It's the way such deaths are treated and the overall tone of the story world.

X-Men was far from grimdark when Thunderbird died and Titans was equally as far from grimdark when Terra died.

[Pinsir]

I don't understand this New 52 = grimdark thing, especially since DCYou.

Granted I came into comics with the New 52 and only read the critically acclaimed stuff.

I feel the same too.

I will confess that one month, probably a year or so into the new52, I took a full month's worth of new52 books and checked and every one of them had blood being spilled in some form or another, or at least most of them.

Not sure if that is or isn't excessive.

I don't think 'violence' equates to 'grimdark' though. Gore probably would qualify and I don't think most New 52 titles have gore.

Interestingly, I saw the ending of Gwenpool and it ends with somebody being burned alive. This, in a cutsey, quirky, Marvel comic.