Posted in Comics, DC Comics: The New 52, My Geeky Life
The New DC Universe
So if you read comics (and maybe even if you don’t) you know DC Comics is about to hit the reset button on all of their comics this week. 52 brand spanking new comics will start rolling out with the publication of the Justice League #1 on Wednesday. Then every Wednesday we will get about 12 to 13 more until all 52 are out.
It’s an ambitious plan and it is partly built around an attempt to bring in new readers who have been scared off of comics in the past. With day and date release of all comics digitally DC will be making a hard push and getting at the millions of readers who never set foot in a comic shop.
The ambition comes with a lot of risk because every comic geek knows at least a few fans who are going to blow a major gasket over losing years of continuity in comics. This is further complicated by the fact they didn’t actually hit a pure reset button. They chose what they were going to keep of each heroes history. Often packing in years of story into a new 5 year history. For anyone who has been reading DC for a long time we are left scratching our head a little on what it is all going to look like.
The thing is this isn’t really for long time readers. Comics’ sales have been crashing for years. I applaud DC for trying to get out in front of the digital market. While I may not be entirely sold with the direction of many of the books, anything which brings new readers into the world of comics is a good thing. Will this work? Who knows but it is going to be a fun ride watching it.
One of the first things I thought when I heard the announcement of 52 new number one issues is that some of them were going to fail (by some I mean many). Some are going to fail because of poor execution. Some are going to fail because despite the quality they might bring to the table they are not connecting with a mass audience. One of the goals is to bring in new readers. The whole project fails if they don’t accomplish this.
I have decided to embrace the ride whole heartedly. Starting this week I will buy each and every one of the new 52 issues (my wallet is already feeling the pain). I will then give a mini-recap which will include how readable I think the comic might be for new readers. Then I will rank the book against each of the 52 issues out so far. This will give me a DC power ranking.
I am then going to use this power ranking to start voting comics off the DC island. This will be my prediction on which books are going to get canceled. I am going to give each comic at least two issues (again my wallet groans in protest). At that point I will start knocking books off my read list. At some point I will whittle it down to just the books I want to read. I have no idea what that magic number is.
I am really curious on how this whole thing will turn out. In particular my predictions of cancellation. Since I will be basing my predictions primarily on quality and this is not always an indicator on what will get canceled. For instance, what if Wonder Woman sucks (I hope it doesn’t). DC will never cancel Wonder Woman so if I vote it off my island I will do so knowing I will be wrong no matter what. I hope many of you will join me because it would be awesome to get a comment section going with other people’s thoughts and predictions. If you’re interested spread the word and see you on Wednesday.
I’m really looking forward to this posts. I was thinking of doing something similar, but only with that small subset of the occult comics since they seem to be the hardest to pull off for all comic companies, but do have a very die-hard fan base.
Thanks for helping spread the word. I am hoping to actually get a few people reading and commenting. I am very interested in everyone’s take on this. My brother and wife will probably be reading some of the new books also. Since they are part of the demographic DC is shooting for (non superhero comic book readers) I will have some insight close to home.