Home Comics & Toys DC Rebirth is about moving characters forward

DC Rebirth is about moving characters forward

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There’re two kinds of reboots when it comes to comic books. You can hype the industry up with a mini-series event that is years in the making and ready to sweep decades of continuity under the comic book rug, or you can go for a creative reboot. One that cycles in new teams of artists and writers for fresher events and stories.

That’s the idea behind DC’s Rebirth event, which is looking to reconnect with fans and to find the sense of awe and wonder that has been lost since the New 52 universe kicked off five years ago. It’s a tweaking of an established universe, one that streamlines it further and sets up the DC comic book world to be more in touch with fans, while moving characters forward.

“Someone asked, “Is this as ambitious as the New 52?” I think Dan had a great point which is it’s more ambitious because with the New 52 we needed a break, we needed to move these characters forward,” DC Co-Publisher Jim Lee said to CBR.

This time around we’re really focusing on story and character and making sure that we’re still sticking with the New 52, but making sure that we haven’t jettisoned things from the past that we might have thrown out with the bathwater initially. Geoff Johns has put an enormous amount of time in with all the different writers of the books and all the editors to make sure they understand the characters and the premises.

We actually have charted out six months to a year of each title, so in many ways there’s a more coherent vision of the universe going forward as we launch with “Rebirth” and go forward.

For me, for the time that I’ve been at DC, my two seminal moments are the lead-in — that “Countdown to Infinite Crisis” and the “Infinite Crisis” period of time that gets you to the New 52, and then the launch of [New] 52,” fellow co-publisher Dan DiDio added.

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Both have a very distinct — one is about a real cohesive operating universe that really runs in lock step with each other that really builds a world. And with New 52 it was really a cold start, in some way some things worked from before, some things were new from before and it was really double paddles to the system and really jump starting the line.

What we’ve done with this is we’ve really taken both things out. We’ve taken what really worked with the continuity of that “Infinite Crisis” period and then taking the freshness and newness of the New 52 and pulling them together. Rebirth, for me, is an amalgam of — at least in my period of time — of everything we’ve been working on to this point.

That’s not a bad comparison to make and aspire to. After the massive Infinite Crisis event that saw a parallel universe Alexander Luthor go mad with power and use the corpse of the reality-eating Anti-Monitor to literally squish dimensions together until he could find a perfect combination to call home (Comics!), DC kicked off a new era under the “One Year Later” banner.

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These were some of the best comics that DC had ever produced. Batman had left Gotham for a year, rebuilding himself as he retook a familiar journey, Superman had been powerless and enjoying life as an ordinary person for months and Wonder Woman had gone undercover. Great stories, with revitalised characters that gave a familiar universe a boost.

And according to DiDio, Rebirth was born out of a very visible disconnect with their fanbase. “We went to New York Comic Con and we did a panel and we had all our best talent on it. … Not only did when the panel portion ended did half the people leave, when we did the Q&A portion nobody had questions about story,” DiDio said.

They asked about superficial material or something else that had nothing to do with the fact that you read the book and you were excited about what happening in there and what was happening to your characters. That was one of the first times I felt that disconnect with our core fanbase, and it scared me. If we can’t connect these people and they’re fading away then there’s no one to buy our books. That’s when we sat down and said, “Let’s redouble our efforts. Let’s connect with our core and then build out from there.”

Rebirth has a massive line-up of talent for the upcoming relaunch, which was revealed at WonderCon. Here’s the full list of teams that’ll be tackling the line-wide event:

JUNE:

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New #1 Issues (Shipping twice monthly):

  • AQUAMAN #1, W Dan Abnett and Brad Walker, A Brad Walker, Jesus Merino, Phil Briones
  • BATMAN #1, W Tom King, A David Finch and Mikel Janin
  • THE FLASH #1, W Joshua Williamson, A Carmine Di Giandomenico and Neil Googe
  • GREEN ARROW #1, W Ben Percy, A Otto Schmidt and Juan Ferreyra
  • GREEN LANTERNS #1, W Sam Humphries, A Robson Rocha and Ardian Syaf
  • SUPERMAN #1, W Superman: Peter Tomasi and Patrick Gleason, A Patrick Gleason and Doug Mahnke
  • WONDER WOMAN #1, W Greg Rucka, A Liam Sharp and Nicola Scott

New Issues (Shipping twice monthly):

  • ACTION COMICS #957, W Dan Jurgens, A Patrick Zircher, Tyler Kirkham, Stephen Segovia
  • DETECTIVE COMICS #934 Detective Comics: W James Tynion, A Eddy Barrows and Alvaro Martinez

JULY

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New #1 Issues (Shipping twice monthly):

  • HAL JORDAN & THE GREEN LANTERN CORPS #1, W Robert Venditti, A Ethan Van Sciver and Rafa Sandoval
  • JUSTICE LEAGUE #1, W Bryan Hitch, A Tony Daniel and Fernando Pasarin
  • NIGHTWING #1 Nightwing: W Tim Seeley, A Javi Fernandez and Marcus To

New #1 Issues (Shipping monthly):

  • BATGIRL #1, Batgirl: W Hope Larson, A Rafael Albuquerque
  • BATGIRL & THE BIRDS OF PREY #1, W Julie and Shawna Benson, A Claire Roe
  • THE HELLBLAZER #1, Simon Oliver, A Moritat
  • RED HOOD & THE OUTLAWS #1, Scott Lobdell, A Dexter Soy
  • THE SUPER-MAN #1, W Gene Yang, A Viktor Bogdanovic
  • TITANS #1, W Dan Abnett, A Brett Booth

AUGUST

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New #1 Issues (Shipping twice monthly):

  • CYBORG #1, W John Semper, A Will Conrad and Paul Pelletier
  • DEATHSTROKE #1, W Christopher Priest, A Carlo Pagulayan, Igor Vitorino, Felipe Watanabe
  • HARLEY QUINN #1, W Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner, A Chad Hardin and John Timms
  • JUSTICE LEAGUE AMERICA #1 (The creative team for this book remains under wraps.)
  • SUICIDE SQUAD #1, W Rob Williams, A Jim Lee and Philip Tan

New #1 Issues (Shipping monthly):

  • BLUE BEETLE #1, W Kieth Giffen, A Scott Kolins
  • EARTH 2 #1 (The creative team for this book remains under wraps.)
  • GOTHAM ACADEMY: NEXT SEMESTER #1 (The creative team for this book remains under wraps.)
  • SUPERGIRL #1, Supergirl: W Steve Orlando, A Brian Ching
  • SUPERWOMAN #1, Superwoman: W Phil Jimenez, A Phil Jimenez and Emanuela Lupacchino
  • TRINITY #1, Trinity: W Francis Manapul, A Francis Manapul and Clay Mann

SEPTEMBER

New #1 Issues (Shipping monthly):

  • BATMAN BEYOND #1, W Dan Jurgens, A Bernard Chang
  • SUPER SONS #1 (The creative team for this book remains under wraps, but DC did reveal that it would be about “son of Superman meets son of Batman.”)
  • TEEN TITANS #1, W Ben Percy, A Jonboy Meyers

Last Updated: March 29, 2016

7 Comments

  1. Ottokie

    March 29, 2016 at 14:38

  2. Blogvader

    March 29, 2016 at 15:01

    DC Rebirth is about getting fanboys to re-buy all those #1’s.

    Personally, I’m sick of the reboots every two or three years, and having universe-wide events every three months.

    Reply

    • Jim Hogan (Banana Hulk Hogan)

      March 29, 2016 at 16:03

      Listen to this man

      Reply

  3. Jan Prins

    March 29, 2016 at 15:03

    No Power Girl?

    Reply

  4. iusedtobe(a)regular

    March 29, 2016 at 15:35

    I just hope they dont try to be all politically correct like Marvel. She-Thor???

    Reply

    • Jim Hogan (Banana Hulk Hogan)

      March 29, 2016 at 16:04

      That’s a sure fire way to get me disinterested in a comic.

      Reply

  5. Rezo Inverse

    March 30, 2016 at 05:21

    After 9 years reading ALL Superman comic’s, with this new “reboot/retcoon”, I’m just going out. And I had take the New 52 as a chance to explore better the DC Universe, without so much old histories to acknowledge, and since then, I also read more than 30 titles per mothn.

    Right now, the only thing I fell is the desire to stop reading DC for a loooooong time.

    Reply

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