Because our lives are more interesting than yours.

Ladies and gentlemen, I invite you now to participate with me in a moment of ritualistic celebration. This week marks a huge milestone for this blog. For, as of this week (excluding any introductory posts), I have been writing for TwistedEncore for one whole year. Huzzah!

I know, I know. Take a moment. Soak it all in. Rejoice. I am your king!

…

Aww, now I look like a jerk. I let all of my petty successes go to my head.

Now I feel shame…

…

Okay, I think I’ve let that all work through my system. Anywho, with this week being a personal milestone for me, I thought this would be a good time to talk about another important accomplishment. This spring, DC Comics celebrated a huge milestone: Action Comics, one of its running series featuring the adventures of Superman, hit its 900^th issue.

That’s pretty darn huge. Action Comics is DC’s longest-running series, published on a (mostly) monthly basis since it’s first issue in 1938. As far as I know, no other series has reached such a milestone, published continually with only a few interruptions for over 70 years.

Seriously, just stop and let that sink in for a second. 70 years. 900 issues.

The reason I bring this up now is that, just this month, DC Comics has been celebrating a… different kind of milestone. In the wake of this summer’s all-encompassing “Flashpoint” story, DC stopped all of its current publications and relaunched its entire line of comics, starting everything back at issue #1. Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, etc. This month, all DC comics are starting over.

This means that Action Comics, after running for over 70 years and achieving a record-level number of issues, is starting back at 1.

This upsets me.

The reason DC Comics has been restarting all of their titles is, according to DC’s publisher Dan DiDio, to provide an accessible “jumping-on point” for new readers to start at, a new beginning comic book readers can follow without having to worry about 70-odd years of continuity behind it. To that end, the September relaunch is also serving as a “reboot” for the DC universe, a chance to change continuity and events. This summer’s “Flashpoint” storyline was written as an excuse to change history.

Long story short, in “Flashpoint,” the Flash found himself stuck in an alternate, dystopian timeline and had to fix things so that the real timeline could be restored.

This he accomplished, but in doing so minor, accidental changes were made to the timeline anyway. And so a modern, “new” DC universe has begun.

DC has been building up to the relaunch with a lot of hype, but really I’m struggling to see the point. Yes, having everything start at issue #1 is a good hook to bring in new readers at the “start,” but how long will that last? 10 or 15 issues down the road and suddenly anyone who wants to start reading the series will have to backtrack to find out what’s going on anyway. Restarting everything at #1 is a gimmick that won’t last very long at all.

But what’s really pissing me off about this whole “reboot” is how haphazardly everything’s being handled. This whole thing is being touted as the birth of the “new DC Universe,” except there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to what’s being changed. Batman is still keeping the same continuity. They’re still keeping the current Robin, Bruce Wayne’s own biological son, Damian, even though any new reader probably won’t know who the heck that is or where he came from.

Green Lantern is keeping the same continuity, despite the Green Lantern Corps having just fought a civil war that caused a lot of collateral damage new readers aren’t going to know about. New readers aren’t going to understand any of this. If this is a new beginning then have a new beginning.

However… However, out of the entirety of this DC Comics relaunch, the character I feel sorry for the most has got to be Superman. Because the changes DC has made to this guy are tragic.

Setting aside the fact that they decided to restart Action Comics after having just achieved 900 FREAKING ISSUES, Dan DiDio and DC Comics have seen fit to change Superman’s character and backstory to a point where he almost seems a caricature of his former self.

I guess the first thing to point out is that, once again, they’ve changed Superman’s backstory. Yeah, this may seem unimportant, but this has to be about the 5^th different origin story we’ve been given for Superman in the past 10 years. “Birthright,” “Secret Origins,” even the out-of-continuity stories like “Superman: Earth One” or “All-Star Superman” have tried presenting different tales of Superman’s earliest days. JUST STOP. You don’t see this kind of confusion with Batman. So why does everyone feel the need to change Superman’s backstory?

This time around, we find a young adult Superman whose adoptive parents are both long-dead and who has grown up isolated and alone. Wow. Way to go there. So long, strong moral foundation!

Not only that, but now after 15 years of continuity, Superman and Lois Lane, devoted husband and wife, are no longer married. No divorce, no falling out. In this “new” continuity, their marriage just never happened.

Why? Simply because Dan DiDio (and yes, I’m placing a lot of blame on this guy) and DC thought that Superman is more relatable and his stories have more tension if he were single. If he’s married to Lois, their dynamic isn’t interesting enough and there’s no drama there.

Dear Mr. DiDio: F#@% YOU.

You don’t think there’s tension in marriage? You don’t think there’s compelling drama between two people when they’re in a relationship, especially when one of them’s a superhero? Go to hell. Think about firefighters, or cops, or soldiers. You don’t think there’s drama in their relationships with their significant others? Heck, in any marriage, there’s conflict. There’s tension. There’s drama. Marriage and committed relationships can make for good story. Even young readers can appreciate that.

But no, we had to reboot everything for no good reason.

All gone! Instead of writing new stories exploring the complexities of Clark Kent and Lois Lane having to deal with problems as a married couple, you’d rather go back to stories that have been played out for 50 years about an awkward, unrequited love triangle between Lois, Clark, and his alter ego.

Oh wait, no, you don’t want to do that, either. You’d rather have Superman be a dark, brooding loner who is so cold and distant he doesn’t connect with anyone.

Damn it, DC. You and I aren’t cool right now.

- Natron out