"You should be extremely excited, not extremely worried! I can say no more. Stay tuned!" --Batman Incorporated artist Chris Burnham, in regard to those wary of DC's announced September company-wide relaunch
"What Dan DiDio is doing is correct, massively gutsy, and long overdue. More power to him." --Wonder Woman writer J. Michael Straczynski, in regard to publisher Dan DiDio's decision to relaunch the entire line
In my very first post I discussed relaunches, reboots, and retcons and what makes them bad and good. To refresh your memory: In my opinion, a bad retcon/reboot is one that simply ignores past stories and changes continuity. A good (or better, anyway) retcon is one that uses an in-story event to alter the past and therefore alter continuity. In this latter version, which I've previously referred to as a "pure retcon," the reboot becomes a part of the history. My opinions on the subject still haven't changed.
Is there a possibility that the Flashpoint reboot will render this chronology blog obsolete? I sure hope not! The original Crisis, Zero Hour, and Infinite Crisis all, to some extent, functioned as company-wide reboots. However, a chronological historical structure was still maintained with each of those mega-events. They all fell into the realm of the "pure reboot" or could be interpreted as such. Now, I'm not going to weigh in on Flashpoint and the reboot until it actually happens. But hopefully it's a fun and engaging read that not only lives up to its hype, but alters the DCU in a respectful way to its current history.
I trust the exclamations of Chris Burnham and JMS. And with those in mind I'm not worried! After all, DC already has a bunch of parallel Earths to work with including First Wave, All-Star, or Earth One if they really want to construct a refreshed and rebooted DCU. I think no matter what occurs, at the very least, I might have to do some serious editing on here. But what do you guys think? I know it is pure speculation at this point, but how will the reboot effect continuity? Furthermore, what would YOU like to see happen?
Oh, and, I'm not the only one wondering what's up. Please, please read this wonderful article by Newsarama Senior Editor Michael Doran.
AND also read this: Brilliant article by Kelly Thompson!
AND ONE MORE article featuring words of divine wisdom from Greg Hatcher.
UPDATE: Ok, so on 6/6/11, Morrison FINALLY chimed in and said that Batman Incorporated will go on hiatus after issue #10, but then will be relaunched with a new Batman Incorporated #1 in 2012. He also said that he will pen a 12 issue Batman: Leviathan series in 2012 that will incorporate (no pun intended) all aspects of his entire run since he began working on Batman almost six years ago. SO, it would appear as if the reboot/relaunch won't really effect Morrison's run? The same thing has been hinted at in regard to Geoff John's also lengthy and also continuity-heavy Green Lantern run of the past several years. I'm still having trouble imagining what the DCU is going to look like when the dust settles, but at least (or so it would seem) DC higher-ups aren't going to mess with their big-money books (Batman and Green Lantern) and their (arguably) two top writers.
UPDATE 2: I added this in comments, but here it is in case y'all don't read comments. Vaneta Rogers posted an amazing inquisitive piece regarding the continuity of the DCnU on Newsarama.
UPDATE 3: WHOA... Amazing article worth reading in its entirety by Tom Bondurant.
UPDATE 4: A Newsarama interview with Alan Moore where gives his two cents regarding the DC relaunch. It's interesting, whether or not you agree with the angry old genius who hates modern comics.
UPDATE 5: On July 29, 2011 comic book genius David Uzumeri posted the following article on Comics Alliance.
