Rebirth Wednesday-Week 0

I've always enjoyed in-depth retrospectives, so I wanted to do some of them with this blog, and I thought the best way to start would be to look at the first six months of DC's Rebirth initiative, a reformatting of their larger universe into something actually worth reading. First I'm going to give a little perspective on the entire Rebirth thing, as well as DC's general continuity for those who aren't complete and utter dorkasaurouses like I am, then I'll go over my own reading history, and maybe then I'll finally actually talk about DC Universe Rebirth #1.

Now, even if you're a more casual watcher of things, you'll probably still know that Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, etc are all in the same universe together, something also done over at Marvel Comics. And if you didn't know that I just informed you while also sounding like a snobbish asshole. Yay me, I guess.

DC's comics generally speaking take place in the same universe, and from 1985 to 2011 DC's timeline was fairly...okay it was messy as all hell, these are superhero comics after all, but regardless the universe was mostly intact. Then Barry Allen decided to screw the timeline.

More specifically, in the 2011 event comic Flashpoint one of the Flashes, Barry Allen to be precise, goes back in time, changes history, and then it ends with him "fixing it". However, the company used this "fixing" to completely alter the DC universe, a complete reboot known as the New 52.

To put it very, very lightly, the New 52 was not popular. Good will for the comics at DC was already waning at this point, but New 52 pretty much burned the fields and salted the ground. In order to appeal to new readers, DC basically set all characters back at square one, do not pass Go, do not collect $200. No more legacy characters, no more continuity.

For those reading who might not understand why this is a big deal, a large part of the appeal to many for the DC universe was how rich and deep it was. By the 1990's and 2000's it felt genuinely like a lived in world. There was history there, and with it came some of the best characters DC ever had. And with the New 52, none of them ever existed.

While a few genuinely good titles stood out among the crowd (Batman by Scott Snyder was something I actually liked a lot, and Batgirl was written by Gail Simone, who did the best she could with dumb editorial decisions), most of the New 52's line-up ranged from mediocre to complete ass. Rebirth is, by and large, DC admitting they screwed the pooch and trying to make nice.

Now, I'm fairly young for a comic nerd, and I haven't read half as much as some people I know, but I do think I'm still fairly in-the-know, at least when it comes to DC. Like most comic fans, there was one comic in particular that hooked me into my favorite universe, and for me that was Blackest Night.

From there I discovered my favorite superhero and series of all time, Jaime Reyes's Blue Beetle series, as well as the ever awesome Cassandra Cain's run as Batgirl. Slightly more recently I discovered the insane epicness that is Gail Simone's Secret Six, a comic so good I recommend to any and all of you. Buy it now, for the love of Darkseid!

I've also recently gone through Booster Gold's pre-New 52 solo series written by Dan Jurgens, which has helped me discover how much I absolutely adore both the gold hero from the future and Dan Jurgens himself. If you notice, none of these series really survived the New 52.

Because I got into comics right around the time that the New 52 was happening, and because one of the new universe's first decisions was to ruin my favorite superhero, I basically exclusively read older comics my entire comic-reading life. I've never really read anything newer than a year old or so, instead reading exclusively dead runs of awesome stuff.

So, to make up for lost time, this retrospective is my attempt to reading everything in a line. Week by week, I will be covering everything that had the words DC Rebirth at the top. Which means I need to start with DC Universe Rebirth #1.

Written by Geoff Johns with art from Ethan van Sciver, Gary Frank, Jason Wright, and Brad Anderson, this comic focuses on Wally West. Sometimes known as Kid Flash, sometimes just known as The Flash, Wally was a much beloved character who, like almost every other legacy character disappeared when the universe got rebooted.

This comic reveals that just as he was removed from continuity in real life, Wally has been removed from the DC universe. No one remembers him, he was never born, he was never a hero. He uses his connection to the Speed Force (the force that gives all DC speedsters their powers) to force himself back into reality over and over again. He tries making contact with other heroes he knew, with villains, and with other characters retconned out of existence by the New 52.

All Wally needs is for someone, any of them, to remember him. Then he can return to the timeline. This is a story about loss, focusing both on how Wally feels with none of the people he once knew and cared about remembering him, only able to view the world he once lived in, and on how the universe itself has lost so much in the retcon.

That's the main reason I enjoy this comic: it is an apology. They've retconned the retcon by saying it wasn't just some time whiplash, it was a deliberate act by an outside force to weaken the DC universe. This being took away ten years of legacy, love, and experience, weakening the world. This neatly explains why the universe sucks so much, and frames this growing resurgence of what once was, of the heroes left behind by the company, as an inevitability, that these great people can't stay down forever.

This clearly frames the entire New 52 debacle as the mistake it was, while keeping it in canon because retconning it completely would be overkill. As a story in and of itself, it's fine. There's a wide variety of feels being employed, and they work well enough. It's not a very big story, but it works nonetheless by keeping the focus on Wally and the DC Universe as a whole. The actual force behind everything is...dumb. Really dumb. It's a stupid as hell move on DC's part. But regardless, this isn't Geoff John's worst story, and it's not his best either. It's a fine introduction to the apology tour of DC, and I can't wait to join you all next week as we dive into the first line of books in the effort to save DC.

DC Universe Rebirth #1: B+

If you'd like to purchase the comic to support the industry, which it desperately needs, please check out this Amazon page.

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