DC Rebirth

This weekend we finally learned more about the titles making up DC’s new Rebirth initiative, including creative teams and creative directions. However, the eponymous DC Rebirth #1 by Geoff Johns, Ivan Reis, Phil Jimenez, Ethan Van Sciver and Gary Frank, which promises to kick things off with major returns and the “biggest secret in the DC Universe,” remains a mystery. In the promotion for DC Rebirth, Johns, who is DC’s chief creative officer, regularly calls to mind his previous two series with Van Sciver, Green Lantern Rebirth and Flash Rebirth, and how he believes they refocused and reinvigorated the franchises. With DC Rebirth on the horizon, we’re looking back at the earlier Rebirth series to see where they succeeded and where they failed.

With mere minutes on the official countdown clock to the DC: Rebirth livestream, writer Marguerite Bennett tweeted an announcement, but it wasn't exactly the announcement we were anticipating from her today: She's launching a Patreon. Good for Bennett, that she's launching a Patreon. It's a great way to stay funded as a creator of any kind these days. I use one myself, to help fund my podcast. But when I saw her tweet, I immediately said to my co-workers "Bennett's not going to be announced as the writer of Wonder Woman."

DC Comics hosted a special livestream event at WonderCon in Los Angeles on Saturday afternoon to unveil the creative teams behind its DC Rebirth event, which relaunches the entire DC Universe line with new issue #1s and multiple double-shipping titles. The relaunch will set the future course of DC Comics at a time when fans are wondering whether the company will embrace a new and diversifying audience or double down on serving a shrinking core audience. The event was introduced by DC All Access host Tiffany Smith, with DC co-publishers Jim Lee and Dan DiDio and chief creative officer and Rebirth chief architect Geoff Johns introducing and interviewing the creative teams as they joined them on stage at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

The hype surrounding DC Rebirth is quickly heating up as we approach the big announcement at WonderCon this Saturday. All we know so far is the titles of the comics, but DC Comics’ Twitter account has been uploading video hints at what we can expect, with split-second looks at some of the characters involved in the relaunch. Ahead of the big reveal this weekend, we’ve slowed things right down to get a glimpse of what we can expect from Rebirth.

It’s been roughly a month since DC Comics announced its latest publishing venture, DC Rebirth, and outside of the titles of the comics, and the news that over half the line will be published twice-monthly, we don’t know a whole heck of a lot. Big announcements are expected at Wondercon on March 26th, but we can’t wait that long, so we’ve put together a list of our biggest hopes --- and our most realistic fears --- for DC’s line-wide relaunch this summer.

When DC announced its slate for the upcoming Rebirth line of comics, it played a relatively safe hand with its announcements. The line seems to head in the opposite direction of the risk-taking DCYou initiative, with many of the publisher's most interesting books, such as Midnighter, Starfire and Martian Manhunter, no longer on the docket. Yet there are three announced books that seem curiously out of place in their line-up: The Super-Man, Superwoman, and The Super Sons. They're all new titles, but they're also titles and concepts that have a long and rich history in the DC Universe. We’re diving back into DC’s archives to see what clues the past might offer us about the future of these books.

Marvel recently announced what looks to be an intriguing new series titled Vote Loki, which sees The God of Mischief running for office in the 2016 presidential election. The official announcement on Marvel.com featured two covers from Tradd Moore and Valerio Schiti and some words from editor Wil Moss, but the one thing the announcement lacked was a creative team. It’s become common practice recently to announce a new series without a creative team, and hope the concept or the name recognition of the character is enough to get fans excited. Vote Loki could be an exciting book, and Wil Moss is editing most of Marvel’s most interesting titles at the moment, but when comics companies rely on the brand of their characters alone, it devalues the hard work of the creators who bring those characters to life.

In the mid-70s, DC Comics radically changed the face of its publishing line by launching fifty-seven new titles while increasing the page count from seventeen to twenty-five. Spearheaded by editor Jenette Kahn, this was referred to as the DC Explosion and introduced the world to classic DC characters like Firestorm, Black Lightning and Shade, The Changing Man. However, an unlucky string of events in the winter of 1977/78 led to the cancellation of a vast swathe of the Explosion books, with some of them never even making it to print. DC's line shrunk drastically as comics were axed in one fell swoop, in what came to be known as the DC Implosion. The lessons of that event may still be relevant today.

There’s a lot we still don’t know about "DC Rebirth," despite what we learned from the official announcement of the publisher's latest linewide relaunch yesterday. To begin with, there are no creative teams announced. No matter how familiar you are with a character, it’s impossible to guess what a book will be like if you don’t know who will be writing, drawing, and coloring it. We don’t even know if the relaunched books will keep the same creative teams, or if this is a total line-wide shake-up. There are books I’d love to see get new creators, like Wonder Woman. And likewise there are books where I’d be afraid to see a shake-up, like Batgirl. But DC Comics isn’t ready to tell us any of that. What we have is a list of titles, and a CBR interview with chief creative officer Geoff Johns. And in that interview, Johns made some telling and alarming remarks.

Today, DC Comics revealed the first details on the "Rebirth" that creative heads Geoff Johns, Jim Lee and Dan DiDio had been teasing for the past few weeks. During the annual retailer convention ComicsPRO, DC pulled back the curtain on its plans for the future of its publishing line, including restoring the "legacy" of heroes like Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and the rest of the DCU. Johns, who helmed previous "rebirths" for Green Lantern and the Flash, claimed the linewide switch in creative direction will be a back-to-basics approach, and we'll even see books like Action Comics and Detective Comics return to their original numbering.