The Great DCnU Swindle

This week, DC Comics completed the first phase of a controversial reboot of their entire line of monthly comic titles. August saw the final issues of all existing titles, with storylines rapidly concluded and a few titles unceremoniously 'disappeared', and since Wednesday 31st August they've been releasing what now amounts to 52 first issues.

These titles will comprise the so-called DCnU - or DC new Universe, differentiating it from the pre-existing DCU - and will incorporate into a single continuum popular established characters from DC-owned 'imprints' Vertigo and Wildstorm - essentially separate but closely-linked companies with their own editorial structure and creative pools.

Some of these 52 new series - Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, The Flash - existed before, but many of them are brand new. They've also stated that the issues will be coming out on a strictly regular monthly basis, regardless of creator lateness, so all #2s will be in October, #3s in November and so on.

On top of all that, one of the cancelled titles was Action Comics, which has been in print ever since debuting a little-known character call Superman in April 1938. This was canned at #904, just under two years shy of its thousandth issue. That's just vandalism - I remember when the world used to make sense, goddamnit!

The aim, at least ostensibly, is to pare down DC's offerings to their essentials in an effort to attract new readers. Everyone knows who Batman is, but DC editorial see his decades of back-story and labyrinthine continuity as a major sticking point when it comes to attracting new readers. A friend - let's call him 'Marzie' - who has only recently started making tentative forays into the dark world of comic collecting has confirmed that this is one of the main impediments to the medium's accessibility.

While this has been an incredible marketing coup that has generated an unprecedented spike in both interest and sales, in the long run this will result - indeed already is resulting - in the hasty assignment of fill-in artists and shoehorned backup features from one issue to the next. This, in turn, can only result in a total lack of aesthetic continuity when a series is reprinted in trade collections, which must be an essential parallel source of income for a wing of the ailing print publishing industry.

One of my favourite series of recent years - Planetary - is a case in point. Warren Ellis and John Cassaday were the respective writer and artist throughout 27 issues and some preposterous delays - most notably three years between the penultimate and final issues. Read in their collected form, however, their story is just sublime, betraying no hint of the real-time delays, behind-the-scenes editorial chicanery or wild speculation generated by the fanboy rumour mill. There's no way Planetary would be cropping up on anyone's Best Of list if it was subject to the whims of the DCnU, with last-minute artist replacements and fill-in issues interrupting the clarity of vision shared by a single creative team. Simply put, there's no place at DC Comics at the moment for a title as artistically valid as Planetary.

Using another example, while the root causes might not have been the same, editorial interference is precisely what killed The Authority - another one of my favourite series - with A-list artists like Frank Quitely and Art Adams jumping ship after being forced to redraw numerous panels - or worse, blurred colour filters simply being overlaid straight onto their artwork during the colouring process to obscure hyper-violent detail.

This would appear to be a direct response to those vocal elements in the fanboy community who seem to value punctual regularity above quality, and who continually bang on about the creator delays that now permeate the comics industry and how you never would have been allowed to get away with it in the '80s. When did that become paramount? Planetary, The Ultimates, All-Star Superman and many more maintained a single creative team through various delays, but will guarantee perennial reprint sales for decades to come. No-one's going to want reprints of this DCnU hodge-podge crap in even a year's time, and I'm going to have even fewer killer recommendations for poor 'Marzie'.

So I'm keeping clear of the DC reboot until the dust's settled. No doubt I'll pick up any collections of the series that are getting sustained rave reviews, but otherwise I can't help but see this as a perfect jumping-off point, which just so happens to have the coincidentally happy side effect of being a huge money-saving exercise. 

Thanks, DC Comics!