I think I might have made this observation before, but after reading Infinite Crisis, and Superboy talking about how gloomy and wrong the universe is, well, these writers and editors, they do know that they are, in fact, the ones writing the gloomy stories, yes? I mean, it's nifty for them to have a reboot or whatever, but they're still going to actually have to write the non-gloomy type stories?
I ask because I've been poking around a couple of the One Year later books, and so far, Clark Kent gets beat up by Luthor, KGBeast gets killed, and, well, this ain't exactly Elliot S! Maggin, Cary Bates and Paul Levitz at the height of the Bronze Age, here.
I'm not saying that they are bad stories. I actually liked the comics I read. I am saying that if they want something different, then they have to write something different. If they don't want something different, then, well, why bother with this whole exercise?
Posted by Mike Chary at April 16, 2006 10:24 PM
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I think this was a transparent exercise in bait and switch. DC knew that the issue of a "darker tone," or "grim and gritty," or what have you, had itself become an incredibly divisive subject among their fans. So by making Infinite Crisis entirely about the shift to that darker tone - and thus feinting towards a newer, lighter tone - they made sure that fans on both sides of the fence would buy the series, no matter how crappy the actual story was.
As far as I can tell - and I think this was telegraphed as early as IC#2 - Infinite Crisis was never meant to actually change the tone of DC's line. It was just supposed to set up 52 and the "One Year Later" revamp... both sales gimmicks that have nothing to do with remaking or rebooting the DC universe as a whole but everything to do with repackaging the individual titles to kick up sales.
I think the writing was on the wall about this when half of DC's "big writers" (Mark Waid, especially--which makes his current LSH series seem a bit odd, I think) started talking about how IC would make the DCU "bright again" (or whatever), while the other half (Greg Rucka, et al) said they saw nothing wrong with their "mature" tone. Yeah, I feel it was definitely just a "let's get people interested" PR thing. On the other hand, we have yet to see things like Paul Dini's Batman, so.....
Me, too. The few 1YL books I've read have not been detectably different in tone from their predecessors.
This may out me as hopelessly naive, but was the purpose of jumping through all these hopes nothing more than getting people to jump through a bunch of hoops? Talk about cynical exploitation of your audience. At least the first Crisis had a purpose, as wrong-headed as I think it was. Of course, I haven't heard a bunch of complaints yet, and the books seem to be selling, so DC probably counts the whole thing as a rousing success.
If writers really wanted to change the tone, they could simply start writing to the new tone instead of whining about what other writers did in the past.
What, it didn't tip you off that the complaints about the tone were put into the mouths of the villains?
(Just like in Zero Hour, where Parallax gave voice to pro-multiverse fans back then.)
DC comics are perfect exactly as they are, and anyone who says differently is a universe-destroying cosmic menace.
I think Jeff R. has it exactly right. All of the comments about how dark and gloomy things are come from the "villains" of the piece - Superman I, Alex Luthor and Superboy Prime. The heroes of the piece have some "Dramatic Realizations About Friendship and Teamwork"(TM), but in general there's nothing that says that the villains are in the right at all.
Its a bit better than Zero Hour, though - that one had me rolling my eyes as they set-up Hal Jordan with a straw-man pro-multiverse argument, then no one even bothered to come up with a reason that his straw-man argument was wrong - they just pummelled him. Here, its a bit more subtle since Alex's goal wasn't really the creation of a "New Multiverse", but rather a "Perfect Earth". Hmmmm.... on second thought, I think I'm wrong - they ARE just using him as the "meta-fan" who thinks everything that DC does is wrong and he could do it better than them.
Geez, the series is even more shallow than I thought it was...
All of these writers, from Waid to Rucka to Johns, have their favorite superhero books on their shelves.
But they also have a copy of Come In Alone.
And they're trying to service them both.
Then I say we destroy the DC UNiverse. Let's buy Time Warner. I'm in for $10.
Bah. Bah I say.
Correct me if I am wrong on this, but IC delivered less than any other reboot series. This holds both in absolute terms, and relative to the (tedious) setting up.
Say what one will about Zero Hour, but it was derned efficient. Some set-up, followed by about 2 months of event and wrap-up. And, there were some defined changes.
In this case, we get a few character tweaks, a few new arcs (that did not need IC to kick-start them), and some over-blown house cleaning. (I still cannot believe that editorial by DeDidio talking up Superboy's death. It was more self-indulgent than Smith's run on Green Arrow.) Oh, and IC only took the better part of a year to set-up, the remainder of that year (plus some of the next) to execute, and about another year after that to wrap up.
And, this is why I am drifting from comics as a whole. :(