Gephyrophillia #244

Originally Posted on 06/01/2011 by Jeff Harris

The core always remains the same.

That's the lesson I always learn when it comes to reviving and revamping characters that have been around longer than I have.

Superman has been around for 73 years. Batman, 72. Captain America, 70. Fantastic Four, 50. Spider-Man hits that milestone next year. These characters evolve with the times because otherwise, they'll look ancient, dated, and out of place. Newspapers aren't the glamorous adventure-filled outlets in the age of cable television, the internet, and social media, and yet, there's Clark Kent: mild-mannered reporter of a great metropolitan newspaper. This is 1938. This is 2011.

Sure, Clark Kent had become a television news anchor and editorial director of a network in addition to his duties at the Daily Planet . . . wait, that didn't happen. Yeah, there was a story and years that he did that. But it didn't happen. Just like the time he ate a chunk of Kryptonite because he gained an immunity from its lethal effects. That didn't happen either, although I do have photographic proof of that:

Truth be told, there has been numerous revamps of the characters we all grew up with and loved at DC. They did it in the 1960s when they revamped Batman, Wonder Woman, and Superman and introduced new versions of the Flash and Green Lantern infusing them with science-fiction elements in tune with what's big in popular culture, becoming relevant. Sadly, while they were in tune with pop culture, DC was slow in diversifying their lineup of characters even though minorities were becoming more and more prominent in pop culture. Marvel was doing just that with their stable of characters, introducing Black Panther, Falcon, Blade, and Storm. In the 1980s, after Crisis on Infinite Earths, they slowly rebooted everything to modernize the characters, shedding the 60s-era personas though the core remained the same, and for a generation, these are the characters that fans enjoyed reading about. Sure, there were the occasional tweaks (Zero Hour, Infinite Crisis, Final Crisis), but they remained relatively intact to the post-COIE inerations.

With DC's latest announcement of completely rebooting their titles in the era of Twitter and other social media, you hear disapproval instantaneously. In fact, if you close you eyes and just concentrate on the so-called silence, you can hear the collective thoughts of 95% of the comicsphere saying "What the hell? This is stupid!!!"

And as someone who has actually enjoyed DC's product from time to time, I would have been saying that as well. Just as the titles were getting better, getting interesting, and becoming entertaining, to pull off a reboot of their entire universe does seem a bit wild and extreme. And it's such a drastic revamp of all titles from the offset. Younger versions of the heroes we know. Altered origins (just as we got the definitive Superman: Secret Origin again), characters back in their old mantles, new heroes appearing, cats loving dogs, Yankees fans loving Red Sox fans, mass hysteria! Sorry, got carried away. To the average older comic reader, yeah, this is a lot to stomach. Everything they've read has been a lie. At least that's their thinking.

However, that's a false response to the changes that's about to happen. Every story you have read is just that, a story. It's just that it's serialized and expansive. Sure, a lot of them are self-contained stories, but sometimes, they affect an entire universe as a whole. And these stories are adaptable for any medium, which is why as long as these characters existed, there has been many interpretations of them on radio, film, television, and the internet.

Batman had a radio show, a live-action serial series, a live-action television series in the 60s, an animated series in the 60s and 70s, a film franchise in the 80s and 90s, an animated series in the 90s, multiple animated series in the 00s, multiple animated films in the 90s, 2000s, and 2010s, a new film franchise in the 2000s and 2010s, and was a part of many team-based animated series in the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, the 2000s, and today. Aside from the DCAU titles, none of them were connected to each other, and they were versions of the same franchise. The core remained the same.

The Batman of the 1940s was different than the Batman of the 1950s who was different than the Batman of the 1960s who was way different than the Batman of the 1970s who was different from the Batman of the 1970s who was different than the Batman of the 1980s who wasn't all that much different than the Batman of the 1990s but was different than the Batman of the 2000s who is different from the Batman of the 2010s. And yet, the core remained the same.

You take away the core, you have a totally different character. I think that's why I'm fearing what's going to happen to Superman more than anybody else because there's a lawsuit that's determined to take nearly everything that we all see as Superman away from him, including perhaps his secret identity, Lois Lane, his original costume, and a few other things.

I also am curious if they're going to be serious about diversifying the cast of characters. Sure, they're putting Cyborg among their A-list heroes (that's one of the effects of the Flashpoint miniseries, which has a world where he is THE hero of the world) and they're keeping Batwoman and Blue Beetle in their prominent roles, but I don't want them to revert Barbera Gordon back to Batgirl when she has become a greater hero in the form of Oracle as well as the only parapelegic character in ANY medium that isn't all woe-is-me about their situation and valued by her peers. I'm curious about how diverse they're willing to go. More females, persons of color, and LGBT individuals in leading roles in books. And no, there shouldn't be JUST one book that manages to have one person representing all of those traits in one fell swoop (to be honest, I don't even know if Renee Montoya's still going to be The Question after all this is done). Plus, considering the Milestone characters have been mishandled since DC brought them into the DC Universe, I don't think they'll have a place in this Brave New DC World, but it would be nice. DC has disrespected Dwayne McDuffie in life and in death, and they (and the writers that knew and respected him) really need to do right by that man.

Still, it's going to be interesting if the rebooted DC Universe is going to be received once it actually comes out. On one hand, if it bombs, they could easily explain it all as a new world in the Multiverse and revert to the same status quo. But hey, we get to see the familiar characters in a new setting. If it's a success and does everything DC wants it to do, well, they'll be seen as champions and heroes in the comics community.

DC actually has the stones to do what Marvel would never do. Completely revamp their entire core universe. Marvel's Ultimate universe, which was supposed to be Marvel's plan to bring their characters to the mainstream without being bogged down by continuity, has been rebooted twice in three years, which eliminated a lot of the problems that its creation was supposed to present. Also, there was the core Marvel universe that also had a bit of a reboot over the years, but people tend to ignore that as well. But I've digressed long enough.

I am cautiously optimistic about this Brave New DC World.

Keep creating.

Jeff Harris,
Creator/Webmaster, The X Bridge.