The rebuilt universe is being used as conceptual fodder in Al Ewing’s books–the New Avengers have an enemy from a previous incarnation of the universe, and the new team calling themselves the Ultimates (not the Millar characters at all, different team) appear to have used some slightly different physical laws to ‘fix’ Galactus, allowing him to stop eating planets.
And apparently they decided to bring one of Captain America’s supporting cast back from the dead with a giant handwave (but admittedly, that does not require a reboot).
Miles Morales is in 616, as are a few other multiversal refugees. But there’s still some kind of multiverse, if only because they didn’t want to lose Spider-Gwen and the Web Warriors.
Other than that, it’s more some subtle revamps here and there: There’s a new Avengers team that’s not the New Avengers, nor the Ultimates, nor the Uncanny Avengers; Tony, Thor, Kamala, and Miles are on it. Peter Parker’s micro-engineering firm is doing well. The Future Foundation doesn’t seem to exist (but not in a “wiped from history” way so much as a “we’re not publishing an FF book right now” way).
There is some weird nonsense with Daredevil and Ant-Man, in the vein of poorly thought-out revamps, but overall it’s the MU with some “cosmic” background events.
As someone who doesn’t read superhero comics, and only reads comics that don’t get rebooted, I’m not sure I understand reboots. Are readers expected to pretend that nothing that happened before the reboot happened? If not, what the hell would the point be in doing a reboot if all the “before” stuff was still canon?
No–the New 52 is a reboot–probably as big as the original Crisis. Everything’s different, everyone has a new history (Batman went through something like 4 or 5 Robins in about 6 years), they keep trying to make Cyborg into an A-List character…and he simply isn’t, Wonder Woman isn’t made of clay, she’s just a bastard child of Zeus and Hippolyta, etc. Superman (and/or Clark) and Lois aren’t interested in each other, and Lois has become sort of a stupid bitch.
They’ve also folded in the Vertigo characters and the Wildstorm characters into the New 52 verse. (They may also have folded in the…um…Static Shock…I forget the label: Millenium? Milestone? characters, but I’m not sure about that)
Plus, with the possible exception of Batman(!) and Flash, everyone’s kind of a dick now.
The characters who are running around now have less in common with the Post-Crisis/Post-Zero Hour/Post-Infinite Crisis guys than those guys did with the Pre-Crisis versions.
That’s the way it’s supposed to work (and never, ever does).
What always happens instead is as follows:
Some people think that the earlier continuity is “too hard” for them or newbies.
They call for a reboot.
Someone points out that "Wait…Teen Titans (or whatever) is our best selling by a huge margin. If we start from ground zero, Superman appears, then Batman a few months later, followed by Flash/GL/Wonder Woman a few months after that and…etc. So since Robin doesn’t appear until Batman’s been around a few years (and other sidekicks at least a while after Robin), there’s no way we can do Titans (or whatever…GL and Batman in the pre-52 case) for a few years. And we’ll lose a ton of readers if we cancel our best selling book(s) for 3 or 4 years.
Someone else says "Golly! We’ll just say “It’s 5 years into the new continuity. Superman showed up 5 years back and everything works forward from that until today, 5 years after Supes’ first appearance”
Nobody ever gets around to putting a “bible” together for the universe saying “Ok, Bats did these things and met these people in those 5 years. Superman did XYZ in those 5 years. The JLA met and had these 27 adventures in those 5 years”.
This leads to stuff like having 3 different and mutually contradictory Hawkmen, all of whom are the same character, but with different powers/origins/history running around…at the same time…in post-Crisis DC. Or Dick Grayson becoming Robin at age 8, growing up as Batman’s partner and now being around 20 years old…in the 5 (or 6?) years since Batman has been around. And similar for Jason-Robin and Tim-Robin. Also Batman conceived Damien 5 years before he became Batman. And you’ve got Tim-Robin in Teen Titans even though, per Batman, he was never an actual Robin. In other words, a total mess.
And then, when editorial realizes “Holy crap–we’ve made a clusterfuck”, they panic and start randomly changing stuff in mid-stream, to the point where even George–the most mellow comic book creator ever-Perez quits in disgust and a half-dozen/dozen other writers walk out.
Oh, no doubt. I’m not reading Squadron Supreme, but I’m kind of expecting him to be back by the end of the story arc that killed him.
Barry Allen, too. The one bright spot about bringing the Fastest and Dullest Man Alive back is, maybe, we get to see him get killed again.
(Although give the success of the Flash TV show - which I love - Comic Barry’s probably around for a while.)
The New 52 reboot wiped out nearly the entire continuity of the DC universe. With the exception of Batman, every character in their books was reset to zero. Superman had just moved to Metropolis from Smallville. Green Lantern hadn’t gotten his ring yet. Cyborg got to have all his bits blown off him again.
Batman still kept a lot of his continuity, and had been superheroing for about five years at the beginning of the reboot. Mostly because Grant Morrison was writing his books, and wasn’t finished with the story he was telling yet. And Morrison draws enough water that DC editorial didn’t want to fuck with him. The reduced time frame did cause some problems, though. He kept all of his various Robins - Dick, Tim, Damian, Jason, even Stephanie. Which means that the average tenure for someone in the little green booties is about nine months or so. You kind of have to not look at that part too closely.
Secret Six? Cancelled to make way for the New 52.
Batwoman? They axed her impending marriage by editorial fiat, then had her get raped by a vampire instead.
The Arkham games? Some idiot decided to hand the PC port to a bunch of proven incompetents, and stuffed a Batman game full of ridiculously out of place, boring tank-on-tank combat.
Ah thanks. I should’ve mentioned I was just reading the Bat stuff (and that haphazardly), so all the talk of a reboot kinda made me scratching my head. They didn’t seem to reboot much at all there, except handwave at that new five-year timeline you mention, that didn’t make any sense (and didn’t really seem important anyways)
Its kind of an interesting problem. On the one hand, you have characters like Batman and Superman that have 80 years of development behind them, and whose backstories and secondary characters, etc. have obviously become pretty complicated and non-sensical, turning off new readers.
On the other hand, if you reboot, then you either loose all the neat stuff from those backstories, or you have to rehash them all over again. And presumably comic book readers don’t want to just read the same stories re-told with different artists.
My complaint with the New 52 all along was that it had the storytelling sensibilities of early Image Comics (and too many of the artists as well). I’d like them to reboot the publisher, if it’s not too much trouble!
There were exactly two things I liked about the New 52: Grant Morrison’s Multiversity, and making Luthor a member of the JLA.
They better give Supes back his red undies with this reboot. His costume looks really bad and dumb without those to balance out all the blue.
The only reboot that didn’t suck was post-Crisis. That lasted, what, ~20 years, they should just go back to that version of DC and ignore all the later reboots of Superboy punches and new 52’s.
Technically when the New 52 started every character had a history because the “present” was five years after the arrival of Superheroes (which gave them space to keep whatever previous stories they wanted) but it’s easy to be confused because many New 52 stories were set essentially five years in the past at the dawn of Superheroes with often very little in the story making that clear.
Keep the Superboy reality punches. However dumb you might think the concept of the punches are (and I kinda liked them), every fix they made was for the better:
[ul]
[li]Doc Magnus isn’t a made-up metal and the Metal Men aren’t real people’s souls stuffed into the robots[/li][li]Batman found Joe Chill so he’s not a psycho*[/li][li]Superboy existed and was a part of the Legion[/li][li]Hal wasn’t a test pilot who somehow was also a drunk driver[/li][li]Wonder Woman was part of the JLA’s founding so she’s one of the big three and not a total n00b. [/li][li]Some sort of patch for Hawkman that I don’t remember. [/li][/ul]
There was more, but just those alone fixed the worst of the post-Crisis screwups where the writers didn’t think about longer-term consequences of their stories.
And the period say +/- 5 years around Infinite Crisis was DC’s last really great period.
*The idea was that since he never found Joe Chill, he simply assumes that EVERY criminal is his parent’s murderer and can be extra-brutal. The '90s sucked.
I have to disagree with you on Joe Chill, though. The Waynes should have been killed by random, “faceless” street crime, not by a readily identifiable antagonist. It doesn’t help that my first exposure to Joe Chill was the execrable Batman: Year Two, but I felt the same way ever since Tim Burton had the Joker kill them in his first Batman movie.
I’m with you on moving away from the '90s grim and dark and dark and grim Batman, though. I really liked Dick Grayson as Batman in Batman RIP. I’d like more of that sort of attitude to stick to the character, regardless of who’s in the cowl. I’m hoping Superheavy is paving the way for a more, I dunno… upbeat Batman.
Another problem I have with Joe Chill is that he as never, so far as I’m aware, developed any sort of cold-based superpowers or manias. This is clearly in violation of the nature of causal reality in the DC universe - or, at least, Gotham City. (see also: V. Fries, E. Nygma, J. Day et. al)
I always loved the bit in DC: ONE MILLION where Batman is off on an adventure and an upbeat Dick Grayson is having a we-can-figure-this-out-and-solve-the-problems chat with Barbara Gordon – until he sees a mugging in progress, and has to go into his ninja-in-a-bulletproof-costume act.
“Ladies and gentlemen…” he announces to her: “…my Batman voice.”
<beat>
“I KNOW A HUNDRED WAYS TO MAKE YOU REGRET THIS.”
<glare>
“PICK A NUMBER.”
He’s a darned nice guy who, sure, can put on his game face and play the part to perfection – but he’s still the good-hearted circus performer who grew up as the laughing-daredevil sidekick to a walking cautionary example.
You know, there is a simple solution that would eliminate the need for re-boots:
Miraculous sorcerers and scientific super-geniuses are quite common in all comic book universes. As a result:
The Fountain of Youth exists. it is a common, over-the-counter medication, available at any corner drugstore. But it only works for one percent of the world’s population.
So, if Clark Kent and Lois Lane spend 30 years as print reporters, and the next 30 years as TV reporters, everybody knows, and nobody cares.
If Reed Richards and Ben Grimm are World War Two veterans, and Clark Savage Jr. is a World War One veteran, everybody knows, and nobody cares.
If Peter Parker and Dick Grayson spend 20 years in grad school, nobody except their thesis advisors care.