The Best Security

Today at Midnight everything changes. By the time the comic gets posted, The New 52 will have officially begun. Until then, it remains a closely guarded secret. Bedrock City Comics is doing a Midnight launch and, of course, we’re going. I thought about trying to find some way to live-tweet the pre-launch party and the launch itself, but then I realized I’d be too busy reading the New Hotness, so you’ll have to wait until Friday’s post for us to collect our thoughts.

Comics Alliance was given special preview access to the first two weeks of The New 52 comics and their extremely spoiler-free run through confirmed a lot of Kris and my speculation about The New 52. First up, it looks like Suicide Squad sucks. I haven’t read all of Ostrander’s Suicide Squad run, but what I did read I really enjoyed. I also loved its spiritual successor, Secret Six. When it was first announced, I was hoping that the new Suicide Squad would be much of the same, but Flashpoint’s Legion of Doom left me with a sinking suspicion that it wouldn’t be that great. I’m glad to hear that some of the other books that I’m really excited about, mainly Frankenstein and Demon Knights look like they’re going to be good. I’m not surprised that CA considered Grant Morrison’s Action Comics the best of the new books. Morrison is a well-loved author and Superman is a much beloved character. I can definitely see great things coing out of their union. Personally, it’s not a book I’m interested in but after the awful Grounded storyline and the dubious Reign of Doomsday stuff, I’m glad that the big boy scout is getting a good run.

Besides the very short and unrevealing Justice League preview that came out a month ago, the only preview pages from any of the New 52 books has been from Batgirl. In the six page preview not only do we get to see Babs back in the cowl kicking butt, but we also see her having flashbacks to The Killing Joke. Babs walking and returning to the role of Batgirl is definitely the biggest and most controversial change that DC is making as part of The New 52 and with this preview it really seems like DC’s saying, “We told you it would make sense and we wouldn’t ignore her character growth as Oracle. See! We’re telling the truth!!”

I lean towards thinking that how the existing fan base perceives these changes will affect how well the DC relaunch goes. If people aren’t happy with how some of these changes were handled, how Babs is able to walk again being the biggest, then it could easily turn them off from the whole DC line. Kris thinks that the people who are concerned about things like that are a very vocal, but very small minority. It’s not that he doesn’t think these changes won’t make waves, but that the majority of DC readers care only about either Batman or Superman and all of the side characters in either “Family” are nice, but not as important as Bats and Supes. If a Batman fan only cares about Batman, he’s only going to buy the books with Batman in them. DC sees that as “Batman sells books!” and thus Batman ends up in six different books like he is in The New 52. Unfortunately, if these readers buy every book that Batman is in, they’re not going to buy much anything else. If Batman was only in two or three books, they might be more willing to experiment with other books and get drawn in. This is the biggest reason Kris feels that things beyond the main Batman and Superman books just don’t sell.

Unfortunately, I think Kris is right, which is why I’m glad to see good press and attention on books like Frankenstein and Demon Knights. These are smaller, weird “fringe” titles that DC has decided to take a risk on. I’m hoping that the press attention will make people give them a try so that they sell well and we don’t end up with a ton of Batman books and nothing else. I love me some Batman, but I’d love to see a diverse and well-rounded DCU even more.