Didiocy

  Last week, I detailed my media-friendly selections for a relaunched Justice League. Yesterday, DC announced that they are relaunching fifty-two of their titles to reflect contemporary issues and tastes (Blecch. No. Wrong). To that end, Jim Lee has redesigned many of the DCU's mainstays.
 Lee was a big star-perhaps the biggest- in the early 1990s. He was last associated with a big hit , "Hush" back in 2003 (when a series of sketches published in Wizard showed he struggled to draw Green Arrow's hat.)  The whole concept of tweaking costumes to make characters recognisable seems unnecessary unless it's to make them more like their movie or television counterparts. In any case, Lee has got rid of Supes' contentious circus strongman shorts and redesigned Cyborg to make him hideously complex to draw.  Ultimately I am reminded of  Lee's mid-1990s mission to revamp venerable Marvel properties.

Heroes Reborn is referred to, rather charitably, as a year-long experiment on Wiki. I think it's also worth noting that the infamous, intermittent All-Star Batman and Robin dropped off the radar several years ago. Lee seems a bit like yesterday's man to me.
52 number one issues- who can afford that? Doubtlessly it will create a sales spike for a while but this digital/download model just seems counter-productive to me. Unless DC abandons twenty-plus years of sadism and aberrant personalities, the product will stiil pander to the same shrinking, ageing demographic.
If superheroes are to survive in comics and not simply in movies, comics have to be available in retail outlets again, they have to either be affordable or value for money; and they have to appeal to kids.Here's my four-tier plan for the DCU. Let's reduce the number of releases by about a dozen, first of all.

Johnny DC:  comics for the very young- Supergirl, Shazam and Metal Men, telling the kind of quirky stories that were done rather brilliantly in the final issues of Super Friends and Billy Batson

 
 All-Star Comics: Superman in Action; Batman and Robin Adventures; Justice League; Green Lantern Corps; Blue Beetle; Amethyst; and Kamandi.

 
This is the All-Ages range, accessible to anyone. Think Stan and Jack or Dini and Timm. The super-heroes range has a summer cross-over event and Treasury-sized Xmas specials.

 Impact Comics: Static, Batwoman's Detective Comics, Hourman, The Legion, Smallville, Traci 13, Captain Fear. This range targets teenage (and female) readers. Superheroes are one genre but there's also sci-fi, romance, humour, the supernatural...and pirates! Maybe even humour and satire? Plastic Man? Angel and the Ape?

Vertigo: Grim and gritty. To be honest, this is a catch-all for the tone of many of today's comics. My new Vertigo might be less experimental than the original; I'm including more visceral horror, crime and noir, war and westerns.

 
There'd be a core of four "super-hero" books, which could have those murky poster covers fanmen love: Dark Knight, Birds of Prey, Secret Six and The Question ( the Vic Sage version, thanks).The horror books are Swamp Thing, Hellblazer, maybe a Wrath of the Spectre revival. Noir and Urban are represented by Sandman Mystery Theatre, Human Target and Hitman. Jonah Hex (with Bat Lash backups) and The Losers are period books.
So, this is the product. If you build it, they will come. Next time, I'll apply the same structure to Marvel.

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