What DC will learn from the Rebirth initiative?

[GlennSimpson]

Yeah none of us long-time fans had any legitimate gripes with the treatments of characters of course, it was our fault for being attached to decades of events that defined characters and relationships. Sorry, I mean "irrelevant bits of DCU history". Fans should learn not to care about the actual product their consuming, right?

When they care more about it than 90% of the people producing it, yes. What you want will never exist. It's not what the vast majority of the creators want to create, it's not what the vast majority want to read.

[Thomas Crown]

What I think they will learn from Rebirth is that if you throw in a little bit of what the cranky old-time readers want, and vaguely insinuate that more is to come, those readers will jump back on for a while, until the next shiny thing comes along or until they find themselves offended that some irrelevant bit of DCU history is being ignored and they quit reading again.

Yeah, QFT. And also that most readers just want the same old, same old, over and over again and most attempts to take these characters beyond that will meet a vehement and spiteful rejection.

[Green Goblin of Sector 2814]

DC learned that the market will not support $2.99 as a price point.
Why do Kyle Rayner and Parallax even need explanation?

Uh, because their very existence rely on those stories. Without those stories, they wouldn't even EXIST. That's pretty self explanatory. And without a set and defined past/origin, Kyle isn't really a character, but a two-dimensional prop. That's true of any comic book character.

Seriously.

They are there, and unless the story requires digging into it then it does not matter why.

If they needed to delve into the past to explain something they can rewrite history any way they want to, because, they tossed out the old stories so they were not bound by them anymore. They can literally come up with whatever they want to now about any of these characters

You're joking, right? You're forgetting that, by rewriting their history, the writer also jeopardizes unraveling pretty much every story that Kyle has ever been a part of since his debut in the comics, which would then radically change his role in the Green Lantern comics set in the present. Ever watch a movie about time travel where the bad guy goes back in time and changes some minor detail in the past, but it then it has a radical impact on the present? Yeah, it would be the same thing. I don't think you realize how removing just a few things from canon then has a ripple effect that makes it so that a lot of the stories that you think wouldn't be effected are.

And on a further note, if any writer can come in and completely alter a character's history, well then they are no longer developed, fully fleshed out characters. They're props. Two-dimensional props. And believe it or not, longtime readers don't want to invest in something if they are in fear that someone is going to come along and make everything they've invested in irrelevant.

And on that matter, why do writers NEED to come in a redefine a character's past when they already have a past to work with. This whole line of thinking that past continuity binds writers is kind of nonsense thinking. If anything, past continuity is what puts the pieces/characters on the board and sets them up for writers to come along and use them in whatever story they want to tell. Geoff Johns wouldn't have been able to tell the story he wanted to tell in Blackest Night if not for that past canon. He didn't have to explain why Martian Manhunter and Tara Markov and Ronnie Raymond were dead. Other writers had come along, some decades beforehand, and done that for him. And then he took those developments and ran with them. He thrived on that continuity.

And the worst part is that Johns couldn't tell a story like Blackest Night in the post-Flashpoint DCU if he wanted to. Because the universe essentially had no history to it. If seeing how much of a headache DC continuity was after Flashpoint and how people constantly complained about it didn't convince you, then I don't what will.

and bringing in something that just happens to overlap some big story somewhere long ago does not mean that whole story, or any other part of it, has to have happened, because the whole point is they are rewriting whatever they need to.

Okay, then explain to me how Ronnie Raymond could have been one of the main central characters of Blackest Night and how Blackest Night is still canon when Ronnie apparently was never a member of the JL until after Flashpoint.

[Lightning Rider]

When they care more about it than 90% of the people producing it, yes. What you want will never exist. It's not what the vast majority of the creators want to create, it's not what the vast majority want to read.

Reboots didn't always encompass complete erasures of history and re-imaginings of main characters that betrayed their core personalities. What "we" want exists now, the cranky readers you love to condescend have won with Rebirth, and for the foreseeable future, many of the iconic features that make Green Arrow, Flash, etc. who they are will not only be remain but serve as foundations for new stories. We made noise, and we're happy. You can keep on telling readers that what they like doesn't matter, it won't make it true.

[Lee Stone]

We could go through your examples, but you still haven't come close to "almost every story".

You can read Nightwing stories without worrying about Teen Titans. Or most stories where he was Robin.

You can read current Teen Titans stories without having read any previous Teen Titans stories.

You can read Batman vs. Joker stories without having ever read a Batman vs. Riddler story, and vice-versa. You don't need to have read "Grounded" to understand a Superman story. Or "Amazon Attacks" to understand a Wonder Woman story.

Not to mention, you don't necessarily have to have read a previous story where a status quo was established in order to understand that status quo or need to know how that status quo got there. Sinestro has an army of yellow-ring-wearing soldiers. You don't need to know the origins of that to appreciate a story with them in it.

Blackest Night doesn't have to make sense. All you need to know is that Black Hand attacked the Earth at some point in the past. That's all you should need to know. But you also seem to subscribe that if Character A is in Story B, and Story B is canon, the every other story with Character A must also be canon, and that's entirely not necessary. In most cases you could cut out huge chunks of a character's background and as long as they showed up in time for story B.

As an example, following the Crisis on Infinite Earths, in the grand scheme of things, DC tried to elevate characters like Iron Monroe to take the place of the Earth 2 Superman and whatnot who were wiped out. But they didn't go far enough, they should have set it up so that Iron was Power Girl's cousin, for example, since Power Girl was an ongoing concern. And he should have been a JSA member, since the JSA was an ongoing concern. But even then, that doesn't mean they have to go in and have Iron fight every fight that the Earth 2 Superman fought - if the story wasn't factually connected to a current story, it can easily be ignored/wiped out.

You are making it WAY more complicated than it has to be.

I don't know if the DCU could survive solely on a Legends of the Dark Knight/Legends of the DC Universe/JLA Classified/JSA Classified format where each title and story is self-contained.

It would be interesting to see DC or Marvel try to do a Dynamite approach with all the ongoings replaced with self-contained mini-series, with each creative team interpreting the characters differently to fit their stories...
But it wouldn't be a shared universe anymore.
Just a bunch of similarly looking Elseworlds stories that 'could' work together if a reader ignored the small details.

[Lightning Rider]

And on a further note, if any writer can come in and completely alter a character's history, well then they are no longer developed, fully fleshed out characters. They're props. Two-dimensional props. And believe it or not, longtime readers don't want to invest in something if they are in fear that someone is going to come along and make everything they've invested in irrelevant.

And on that matter, why do writers NEED to come in a redefine a character's past when they already have a past to work with. This whole line of thinking that past continuity binds writers is kind of nonsense thinking. If anything, past continuity is what puts the pieces/characters on the board and sets them up for writers to come along and use them in whatever story they want to tell. Geoff Johns wouldn't have been able to tell the story he wanted to tell in Blackest Night if not for that past canon. He didn't have to explain why Martian Manhunter and Tara Markov and Ronnie Raymond were dead. Other writers had come along, some decades beforehand, and done that for him. And then he took those developments and ran with them. He thrived on that continuity.

Yes. There's no reason new stories need the characters to be arbitrarily refashioned, in some cases to the point of being unrecognizable, while dumping their past in the garbage. Only to inevitably guide the characters right back to where they've already been, because that's part of what makes the character that character. So much of the New 52 seemed to be just waiting for a character to inevitably do exactly what they did decades earlier. Meet the same friends, hook up with the same lovers. Because that's a part of who they are.

[cranger]

Okay, then explain to me how Ronnie Raymond could have been one of the main central characters of Blackest Night and how Blackest Night is still canon when Ronnie apparently was never a member of the JL until after Flashpoint.

Blackest Night is not canon anymore. Maybe something similar happened and it did not involve Ronnie Raymond. The events still managed to happen in some way that had some similar consequences for some of the characters that it matters for in whatever story in the New 52 referenced it.

[Green Goblin of Sector 2814]

We could go through your examples, but you still haven't come close to "almost every story".

You can read Nightwing stories without worrying about Teen Titans. Or most stories where he was Robin.

You can read current Teen Titans stories without having read any previous Teen Titans stories.

You can read Batman vs. Joker stories without having ever read a Batman vs. Riddler story, and vice-versa. You don't need to have read "Grounded" to understand a Superman story. Or "Amazon Attacks" to understand a Wonder Woman story.

Not to mention, you don't necessarily have to have read a previous story where a status quo was established in order to understand that status quo or need to know how that status quo got there. Sinestro has an army of yellow-ring-wearing soldiers. You don't need to know the origins of that to appreciate a story with them in it.

Blackest Night doesn't have to make sense. All you need to know is that Black Hand attacked the Earth at some point in the past. That's all you should need to know. But you also seem to subscribe that if Character A is in Story B, and Story B is canon, the every other story with Character A must also be canon, and that's entirely not necessary. In most cases you could cut out huge chunks of a character's background and as long as they showed up in time for story B.

As an example, following the Crisis on Infinite Earths, in the grand scheme of things, DC tried to elevate characters like Iron Monroe to take the place of the Earth 2 Superman and whatnot who were wiped out. But they didn't go far enough, they should have set it up so that Iron was Power Girl's cousin, for example, since Power Girl was an ongoing concern. And he should have been a JSA member, since the JSA was an ongoing concern. But even then, that doesn't mean they have to go in and have Iron fight every fight that the Earth 2 Superman fought - if the story wasn't factually connected to a current story, it can easily be ignored/wiped out.

You are making it WAY more complicated than it has to be.

Now you're just willfully burying your head in the sand. Again, you just don't want to accept the conclusion that, yes, stories in a shared universe BUILD off one another. So you can't really pick and choose what's canon and what's not without it seriously altering things.

Firstly, Blackest Night is just one of many examples. Let's talk about how Identity Crisis required the satellite era Conway/Perez JLA and the Silver Age JLA comics to also be in canon in order to justify the central plot theme of that story. And not only that, but the roles that the whole cast plays in that story relies on past canon. Why would the whole League come out to pay respect to Sue when she was murdered? Did she have some sort of connection with them like say her husband being a member in the 80s? And when did Ray Palmer and his wife get divorced because last I read in nineteen-fifty-something they were still together? And who is this Green Lantern Kyle Radner or whatever? And why is Hal Jordan now the Spectre? And why are Hal Jordan and Green Arrow so chummy? Did they have some sort of previous friendship in the comics that I should know about? And when did Wally become the Flash? And who is this new Robin Tim Drake and where's Dick Grayson? And when did Clark and Lois get married? Last I read in 1945, she still had no idea he was Superman!

Let's talk about how you could pick up a Titans comic without having to read the old Titans comics, but whenever Deathstroke or Trigon did pop up, the reader would have to understand that those characters came from the Wolfman/Perez days. What, do you expect every Titans issue Deathstroke ever appears in to be his first meeting with the team without any memory of their past conflicts? And for that matter, whenever Deathstroke appeared in Nightwing (which he did multiple times), the reader would have to know that Deathstroke is an enemy of Dick's from his Titans days. In fact, the entire Renegade arc in Nightwing during the Infinite Crisis days depends on the reader understanding that Dick and Slade have a rivalry going back 30 years.

And no, you don't have to read every Batman and Joker story to appreciate a new Batman vs. Joker story, but you do have to know that Joker killed Jason Todd in Death in the Family in 1988 and that Jason was subsequently resurrected to understand why he is now not Robin anymore, but Red Hood. And you also have to know that Joker shot Barbara Gordon in Killing Joke in order to understand why Barbara spent about 25 years worth of Batman comics in a wheelchair as Oracle and not as Batgirl.

And whenever you picked up a Superman comic, you didn't have to read Death of Superman to appreciate a newer story with Doomsday in it, but you should also understand that the only reason Doomsday exists is because of that story. Likewise, anyone reading a Superman comic post-1996 would be confused if they hadn't kept up with the fact that Lois had not only learned Clark's secret identity, but had married him too.

And yes, Blackest Night does need to make sense if DC is going to reference it even now (in most recent Green Lanterns issue) because the entire premise of that story was heroes rising from the dead, yet those heroes that were rising from the dead apparently never died and were never even members of the League in the post-Flashpoint canon.

So, your theory, suggesting past continuity never has a lasting or meaningful or even relevant impact upon the stories told in the present, is just not true.

So, you don't actually have to read the previous stories to come in and appreciate the current status quo, but you do have to appreciate that the current status quo is the way it is because of those previous stories. And, while we're on that note, you have yet to really justify WHY those previous stories should be erased if they're not really serving as an impediment.

[Green Goblin of Sector 2814]

Blackest Night is not canon anymore. Maybe something similar happened and it did not involve Ronnie Raymond. The events still managed to happen in some way that had some similar consequences for some of the characters that it matters for in whatever story in the New 52 referenced it.

Actually, it is. It was literally just referenced in Green Lanterns AND it was referenced by Hal in New 52 issues of Green Lantern, calling it "the Blackest Night." And since Geoff Johns's run just continued onward after Flashpoint, picking up right where it left off before Flashpoint, there's really no reason to assume it was based on a different premise (i.e. something other than heroes rising from the dead). I don't know if DC is going to come out with a "Blackest Night Redux" edition, but wouldn't that be more work than necessary when they could just say that the continuity needed to make Blackest Night work is back in canon after Rebirth?

[cranger]

Actually, it is. It was literally just referenced in Green Lanterns AND it was referenced by Hal in New 52 issues of Green Lantern, calling it "the Blackest Night." And since Geoff Johns's run just continued onward after Flashpoint, picking up right where it left off before Flashpoint, there's really no reason to assume it was based on a different premise (i.e. something other than heroes rising from the dead). I don't know if DC is going to come out with a "Blackest Night Redux" edition, but wouldn't that be more work than necessary when they could just say that the continuity needed to make Blackest Night work is back in canon after Rebirth?

Well DC said this at the beginning of New 52, that certain things probably still happened but differently. So yes some event that people in the DCU refer to as Blackest Night happened and it sounds like it still involved heroes rising from the dead, but obviously (and I say this because you pointed out this already) some things happened differently. Not differently enough to change the premise, but at least the people involved and other details like that.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that changing past stories does not change things, or that current stories are not built upon past stories, just that in a universe that was 'rebooted' that the existence of some similar elements does not automatically mean the inclusion of other elements. Maybe it is because as a New Reader, when something references Blackest Night (Black Hand was already featured early in the GL run) I don't get hung up on just which parts still counted, and that is what DC was going for back then. As a long time X-Men reader who has seen countless retcons and complete disregard for past stories I feel your pain.

[Green Goblin of Sector 2814]

Yeah, QFT. And also that most readers just want the same old, same old, over and over again and most attempts to take these characters beyond that will meet a vehement and spiteful rejection.

That's actually funny because a reboot by its nature regressive. Rebooting means that the hero has to redo everything that he had already accomplished before that, i.e. learning how to use his powers, meeting all of his main villains for the first time, etc.

[Green Goblin of Sector 2814]

Well DC said this at the beginning of New 52, that certain things probably still happened but differently. So yes some event that people in the DCU refer to as Blackest Night happened and it sounds like it still involved heroes rising from the dead, but obviously (and I say this because you pointed out this already) some things happened differently. Not differently enough to change the premise, but at least the people involved and other details like that.

That still doesn't make sense. These characters who I mentioned weren't just there in the background. They played major roles in the story. They pretty much were major drivers of the story: Firestorm, Atom, Elongated Man, Martian Manhunter, etc. So, again, saying that "it happened but different and without any of those guys" doesn't fly here. And that's not just the case with Blackest Night. Its the case with almost any story that DC has said is still canon. The only way to fix it is to, well, put back the continuity that's needed to make it work. You understand that, right?

[cranger]

That still doesn't make sense to me. These characters who I mentioned weren't just there in the background. They played major roles in the story. They pretty much were major drivers of the story: Firestorm, Atom, Elongated Man, Martian Manhunter, etc. So, again, saying that "it happened but different and without any of those guys" doesn't suit me. And that's not just the case with Blackest Night. Its the case with almost any story that DC has said is still canon. The only way to fix it for me is to, well, put back the continuity that's needed to make it work. You understand that, right?

Fixed that for you. I know your agenda, I am not telling you that DC would not be more enjoyable for you if they did what you want, but don't confuse what would suit your preferences with what makes sense for anyone else.

Saying that some event took place which involved heroes rising from the dead and being referred to as Blackest Night but many of the major characters were not involved with it is entirely reasonable. It is not even that far-fetched of a concept. Many stories that are translated from paper to film have such discrepancies, including things as important as which characters were involved. I don't watch Walking Dead but I read the comics, and I could very easily discuss things with people who watched the shows and spot the things that happened on the show but happened differently, and the difference primarily is always the characters.

[Green Goblin of Sector 2814]

Fixed that for you. I know your agenda, I am not telling you that DC would not be more enjoyable for you if they did what you want, but don't confuse what would suit your preferences with what makes sense for anyone else.

Again...no. Its either they were involved or it just couldn't have happened. That's not my personal hang-up. That's just the nature of those stories. You haven't read them so you don't know just how important those characters being there is to the plot. So, no, it just doesn't make sense if they're not there. For the example of Blackest Night, who were the heroes rising from the dead? Nameless characters we've never met before? Except that's also impossible even because the League had never expanded its roster or gone through any other iteration during the "time" in which Blackest Night was supposed to have taken place.

Saying that some event took place which involved heroes rising from the dead and being referred to as Blackest Night but many of the major characters were not involved with it is entirely reasonable. It is not even that far-fetched of a concept. Many stories that are translated from paper to film have such discrepancies, including things as important as which characters were involved. I don't watch Walking Dead but I read the comics, and I could very easily discuss things with people who watched the shows and spot the things that happened on the show but happened differently, and the difference primarily is always the characters.

Again, no its not. At least not within the context of one universe. We're not talking about comic to a TV show, two entirely separate fictional canons. We're talking about the comics to the comics, and the comics are supposed to be ONE canon. Again, DC hasn't released any "Blackest Night Redux" and I don't see them doing that any time soon, so all we have to go by is the way that it was originally told. And you can't say something just "happened" if the main players aren't even supposed to be on the playing board. That is just common sense. Again, maybe you don't appreciate it because you haven't read those stories, but please don't tell me I am being irrational when I say that you can't tell me something "happened" but at the same time make impossible to have happened.

[Vision]

DC Comics Just Made Their Entire History Officially Canon

Can anyone add some context to this pics here? I just want to know we are all in the same page