Comic book geeks are debating the merits of DC Comics’ reboot of its entire line of superhero comics, which begins this week. DC hopes the reboot will attract new readers who have previously shied away from comics that have decades of continuity. Imagine starting to watch Lost in the middle of its fifth season and trying to figure out the plot and the characters’ relationships to each other. That kind of serial storytelling is amplified in comics a hundredfold, making it difficult for new readers to understand exactly what is going on in Justice League #578. The reboot solves that problem by wiping out the continuity and starting every series at issue #1. Comic book geeks being comic book geeks, many of them are outraged that DC is tampering with storylines that they’ve followed for years.
I’m not a huge DC fan, so I don’t have strong feelings about the move. I am curious to check out a few of the 52 titles to see if they grab my interest (like Justice League and Batman). But I’m much more interested in the forthcoming season 9 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
