f13.net

So DC is once again rebooting, as some of you know.

Now the idea beneath this reboot has leaked. Wait for it.

So you know how the New 52 was supposed to be Barry Allen's fault from the miniseries Flashpoint?

It turns out it wasn't his fault. The old universe is slowly leaking back in, and the thing is, the whole New 52 thing was the sinister experiment of a mysterious being who wanted to see what would happen to the DC heroes if some big changes were made in their lives.

Who is this mysterious being?

Dr. Manhattan. Yes, the Watchmen are being *integrated* into the DC Universe. In Rebirth #1, apparently (I'm going off screenshots going around), Batman finds the Comedian's smily-face badge with the blood on it. And apparently it closes with Dr. Manhattan being explicitly revealed as the villain behind it all.

This is like buying the rights to One Hundred Years of Solitude and integrating it into Days of Our Lives. It is the dumbest idea I have ever heard from comics professionals. Ever.

/DC

The new DC Comics' logo is at least better than the previous one though it still has issues (those sharp "wedges" inside the letters won't render/print well at small sizes, for example).

(http://i.imgur.com/b9HOXLe.jpg)

http://www.creativebloq.com/logos/designers-react-new-dc-comics-logo-51620438

Wasn't the last logo rebrand only 5 years ago?  Jesustheyre a terribly run company

If the Dr. Manhattan thing is true... holy fuck. I thought the latest Secret Wars shit was bad. Holy shit, that's goddamn terrible.

Oh fucking god. Johns has given an interview where he defends the idea of Dr. Manhattan as the metafictional villain in charge of the New 52 as the only accurate interpretation of Watchmen: that Watchmen was a plea to love superheroes more, and to treat them lovingly.

You can definitely say that about Grant Morrison's stuff: he loves superheroes.

Alan Moore is (or was) interested in superheroes but he doesn't love them. And Watchmen definitely is not saying, "Love your superheroes and don't be so grimdark".

Every once in a while comic-book writers are determined to live down to the image everyone has of them as being dimwitted adolescents.

I used to like Johns a whole bunch but his recent ideas behind the DC Universe really makes me question his sensibilities. There is absolutely nothing in Watchmen about loving superheroes. Watchmen takes the idea of superheroes and goes "This is what this shit would really be like. Trust me, nerds... you would not like to live in this world."

Tough loving superheroes, maybe.

Horrible concept, but at least they're ret conning out all the changes from 52.

Comixology had a sale over the weekend on DC stuff, so I bought all of Convergence and also the Flash: Rebirth and Flashpoint series that I'd missed from when Barry Allen came back.

I finished reading Convergence. HOLY. SHIT. Was this entire crossover nothing more than a really shitty version of Marvel's Battleworld from Secret Wars? The series itself was goddamn terrible. All these new Earth-2 heroes like Former Female Wildcat turned current Animal (Wo)Man, Batman's dad as Batman, Not Old Earthy Green Lantern, a young Jay Garrick with a terrible helmet, Dick Never Robin or a Super Hero Grayson and Black Superman spend like 8 issues wandering around the Doom Brainiac-created Battleworld Telos, only to watch as Telos and Brainiac save the universe/multiverse somehow so that despite all of what happened (in the spin-off books, not the actual regular series), the multiverse is right exactly where it was before, only the Earth-2 heroes get to go somewhere completely unspecified. It was a fucking narrative mess and the art was boring as shit despite having some good artists. I suppose having a narrative thread that basically read "Heroes walk to spot and fight things for no reason, then have no agency in the final confrontation" is difficult to illustrate.

I wish Alan Moore hadn't stopped doing interviews because I really want someone to ask him what he thinks of this.

If he still has rights to the Watchman Characters he would have had to approve it. Plus they would have to facter on the guy running screaming to the nearest Nerd Press. Now it could be they are counting on Moore running to nerd press in order to get publicity...

He can't stop them using the characters and said in 2014 that he would stop doing interviews in protest at someone suggesting he was wrong to use the Golliwog as a character in the Nemo books. But I did a quick search and he seems to have done more interviews since then, so maybe we will hear what he thinks.

I guess if they're going the whole hog they could just bring Rorschach back. "As he lay frozen beneath the ice the alien force which had assumed his identity confronted Doctor Manhattan..."

Almost every one of the big DC-centric writers seems to be someone who can sometimes do something really good, but often has just terrible ideas and is incapable of restraint. Like Mark Waid and the speed force shit. (I think the Speed Force may be the single dumbest thing in comics)

Unless I'm mistaken he may still be too busy with those Cthulhu porn books to comment.

Well that was an informative Internet search.  :ye_gods:

They're actually not bad books, I thought they were pretty good. Certainly better than almost any capeshit or small press/indie stuff. The porn isn't over the top and is actually necessary for the story, it just wouldn't have been shown at a mainstream publisher. Try The Courtyard and if you like it read the rest. I don't remember that one having any porny bits in it.