EPISODE 242: VIEWS ON REBIRTH MONTH ONE

Episode 242: Views on Rebirth Month One

DC Comics has once again revamped their line.  You might have heard about this.  It's been in the papers.  After five years of creative upheavals and weird directions and just bone headed decisions the powers that be decided that something was missing in the DCU and so they tapped Geoff Johns to craft a course correction for the line.  The result?  DC Rebirth.  

I usually shy away from covering newer comics for a variety of reasons but this is a pretty big deal and...shockingly some might say...I've really liked what DC has been laying down.  So I thought it might be fun to talk about the first month worth of books and I brought a friend along for the ride.  Joining me to this time out is Kevin Cushing, formerly of the Spider-Man Crawlspace Podcast and other fine shows.  Kevin has not been podcasting at all over the past year or so.  Some say he's been on the run from the mob.  Others say that he was framed for a crime he didn't commit and disappeared into the Los Angeles underground.  There's this rumor that he wasn't all that hot on new comics so he's stayed away from the microphone.  No matter the case he's back on Views and I was glad he decided to join me.

After a brief discussion about the DC Univerese: Rebirth one shot we dive into all of the Rebirth comics from June.  We spend a lot of time on the Superman books because it's my show and I am so in love with the new creative regimes on Action Comics and Superman that it just felt right to talk about them for so long.  We also go over Batman, Detective Comics, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lanterns, Aquaman and Green Arrow in that order, which just so happens to be the order I read the books when I pick them up at the shop.  It's a fun two hours worth of comic talk.  What titles did we like?  Did we have any problems with them?  Has Rebirth been worth it?  Listen and find out.  

Thanks again to Kevin for coming out to play.  Hopefully we'll get together to record another one of these next month!

Next Time: The father/daughter team of Alan and Emily Middleton stop by to start a two part crossover with one of their shows  that is all about the 20th anniversary of Kingdom Come!

THOUGHTS ON DC REBIRTH...BEFORE THE BOOK HITS THE STANDS

DC Comics and I have had a rather complicated relationship over the past few years.  

...

You know, I just typed that sentence and now I immediately regret it.  It makes it seem like DC Comics and I had a romantic thing going on and that just isn't the case.  DC is a comics publisher and I am a person.  It's not like we can date or get married.  So saying that our relationship is complicated implies that there was something romantic between us and that just isn't possible.

The better thing to write would be that I have had complicated feelings about DC Comics over the past ten or so years.  See, I started collecting comics back in 1987 but until the summer of 1994 I mainly stuck to the Superman titles.  I would pick up the odd book here and there and follow the Batman books or Flash (especially when the first television series hit in 1990) and I went through my obligatory X-Men phase in 1991, which lasted about a year, but for the most part I stuck with the Man of Steel.  That changed in the summer of 1994.  I had just graduated high school and Zero Hour: Crisis in Time led me down the path of buying a bunch of different titles.  I jumped feet first into the DC Universe and stayed there for well over a decade.  At one point I was buying all of the Superman books, Flash, Green Lantern, most of the Batman titles, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, JLA, JSA, Martian Manhunter and a handful of other random books.  

To be fair I would take day trips and weekend hikes into the Marvel Universe and even take a peek at what Image and other publishers were up to but at the end of the day I was a DC guy.

Things started to change at the beginning of the twenty-first century, which strikes me as another overly dramatic way of beginning of sentence but that doesn't make it any less accurate.  Around 2000/2001 the party seemed to be ending.  I wasn't connecting with the books like I used to and slowly I started culling titles from my pull list.  It was weird to suddenly feel like I was losing touch with the comics I was reading.  Looking back this was a very natural thing but I didn't have that perspective at the time.

My mood picked up around 2003, which was weird because DC was going through some significant changes both editorially and creatively at that time.  Titles I still loved like Young Justice and Supergirl were being cancelled, so on one hand it seemed like the end of an era.  On the other hand I rather enjoyed Geoff Johns' Teen Titans and Judd Winick's Outsiders.  Winick also began writing Green Arrow and Greg Rucka started his run on Wonder Woman.  Then the build-up to Infinite Crisis began in earnest and I was completely on board.  Suddenly I was buying all the titles again and while things were different I was enjoying myself and felt part of that world.