The Four Color Media Monitor

The New York Daily News has written its coverage of DC's current publicity stunt - and boy is it ever, no matter what Dan DiDio tries to say - and Superman, for example, is being reinvented for sake of angst:

The Man of Steel that fans will be seeing in Wednesday's issue of Justice League #1 bears some resemblance to the superhero who has been leaping tall buildings in a single bound since he first appeared in 1938.

But gone are his trademark red trunks, and in is a sleek modern cape.

His adoptive parents, Ma and Pa Kent, are both dead and his long-running romance and marriage to Lois Lane has been dissolved as part of DC Comics' unprecedented reboot of its entire line of comics.

"By having [Superman] not being married and both his parents being deceased, what you have is a little more sense of isolation for him," says DC co-publisher Dan DiDio.

"He doesn't have that human tether.

"Because he's still an alien among men, he feels separate from everyone else … which gives him much more dramatic moments and much more questionable choices and therefore more story opportunities."

I'm sure they will be quite questionable choices he'll be making, but simultaneously less opportunities. And the dramatic moments? I suspect they'll be more like angst, just what the X-Men became too full of.

Many fans are wondering if the publisher's big move — known in the industry as "the new 52" after the number of comic book series starting at issue number one in the next month — isn't itself a questionable choice.

Because of the disruption to the time stream in the recent company-wide story line caused by the Flash's arch-nemesis, DC got the opportunity to hit the reset button on all its heroes in a way that's reminiscent of J.J. Abrams' recent "Star Trek" restart.

DiDio says it's a great chance to unburden writers and artists from the shackles of decades of dense continuity to tell fresh stories — and gives new readers a chance to jump aboard.

Very funny. As it so happens, they don't have to acknowledge each and every aspect of past stories. The goal is to write new ones that can stand on their own.

And as they revealed, not everything is being rebooted - just what they think they can get away with, while Green Lantern and Batman, for example, are remaining the same, but if Sinestro is replacing Hal Jordan as star of the GL book, I don't see how that's supposed to be a jumping on point for newcomers.

Judging by some of the reaction on the Internet when the publisher's initiative was announced in June, however, some view the move as kryptonite to longtime readers who saw no reason to change the status quo.

"There are three sides," says Matthew Acevedo, 28, a manager at Galaxy Comics in Park Slope. ‘There are people who say they'll drop it entirely, there are others who are excited and there are some people who say they'll wait and see the first issues before deciding. But you have to take it with a grain of salt, because fans' initial reaction to any change is anger."

And by now, that anger isn't likely to fade as easily as it could in the past. Why, I don't think they ever recovered from the Zero Hour fiasco, one of the leading reasons why they sank to such low sales by the turn of the century.

Plus, if the reaction to Marvel's erasing the Spider-Marriage is any sign, the same result could come in here. Especially if the Justice Society is being wiped out so blatantly.

But comic book publishers have long struggled with the paradox that its superheroes can't age at the same rate that the world around them does. If Batman, who first appeared in 1939, aged at a normal rate, he'd be in his 90s now, battling the Joker only on Bingo nights at a Gotham City assisted-living facility.

Oh, isn't that cute. They have been able in the past to tell plenty of stories without aging the characters much, if at all, and I don't think anybody ever expected them to.

There's also been a struggle to attract new readers — a frustration that if even a fraction of the mainstream audience that paid money to propel "The Dark Knight" to $533 million at the U.S. box office bought a comic book, the industry would be in much better shape.

But it hasn't worked out that way, has it? There are some moviegoers who have, but ultimately didn't become addicted, mainly because they've kept using a bait-and-switch approach that's backfired on them.

"We knew we were making big changes, we knew there would be fan outcry, but the thing that really guided us was the cool, great possibilities that could come out of something like this," says co-publisher Jim Lee.

"By making these kind of changes, we would restore a lot of the things that we wanted to have in the characters and also set the stage for really cool stories that we couldn't do before.

"And that we could achieve by rolling back the experience on the characters, so they're not in the prime of their careers, they haven't battled their arch-nemeses a million times, saved the world countless times. We felt that was a richer, more fertile ground to mine for all the characters."

Simply hilarious. Most of what they clearly have in mind for "cool possibilities" are so PC-laden, I'm not sure many today would be very excited.

The industry has never seen anything like this on a company-wide scale.

And while some fans may see the New 52 as an insidious plot worthy of Lex Luthor, Lee believes many more will get the chance to fall in love with characters like Superman all over again — even if he's a little angrier and rougher around the edges than he used to be.

"In my mind, if you can look at the character and you can't tell who it is, then we have a problem," says Lee.

"But if you look at [the new Superman], you can tell he's Superman. Yeah, he doesn't have the red trunks, but to me the red trunks don't define Superman."

I've looked at the character, and even if his facial features haven't changed, based on the "personality" they seem bent on giving him, I think I can't tell who he is. Never mind the red trunks; it's the characterization they hint at, strongly skewing towards the darkness, that's the problem.

With the reboot, the Justice League is getting an upgrade.

The team features all of the long-time A-listers - including Batman, Wonder Woman and The Flash -- but includes a new member, Cyborg, aka Vic Stone.

The character had been a fan favorite in the previous DC continuity as part of the sidekick team, the Teen Titans.

"Cyborg is the 21st Century superhero," says writer Geoff Johns. "By telling Cyborg's origin story as part of the origin of the Justice League, we put a spotlight on one of DC’s greatest characters.

More likely they'll just make him into something less special than Vic was when he was a member of the New Teen Titans. Why, what Johns is suggesting is that they'll put less effective emphasis on him from a human perspective, and be far too trendy.

And isn't that interesting how, even after Bob Harras supposedly became EIC, DiDio still hogs the spotlight and Harras seems to have no role as a spokesperson.

Labels: bad editors, dc comics, dreadful writers, msm propaganda, Superman