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Brian Joseph Mayer
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Joined: 10 December 2009
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Posted: 07 June 2011 at 4:29pm \| IP Logged \| 1

"I wonder why Barbara Gordon couldn't be Oracle AND Batgirl? Wouldn't being in a wheelchair be the best possible secret identity for Batgirl?"

I just got to wondering why Barbara Gordon couldn't have a younger sister in this new reboot that follows in her footsteps to become Batgirl after discovering her older sisters mysterious past...and present.

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Dave Phelps
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Posted: 07 June 2011 at 4:37pm \| IP Logged \| 2

Chad, the whole point of Oracle is that she can't leave the chair but is still able to do a lot of good - even more than she was able to do before she ended up in the chair - and she can even kick some butt when the situation requires it. You take away the actual disability, and she's just another supersmart superhero in a world full of them and not a truly unique creation in her own right.

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Dave Phelps
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Posted: 07 June 2011 at 4:49pm \| IP Logged \| 3

Looking at the latest round of announcements, it's nice to finally see some evidence of that "diversity" they were promising. I'll be surprised to see any of them lasting for more than a year, but it's good of them to try. Not that any of them seem particularly appealing to me, unfortunately. Maybe I... Vampire, although I'm not familiar with any of the creative team.

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Steve D Swanson
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Posted: 07 June 2011 at 5:58pm \| IP Logged \| 4

I'm 35 years old and am apparently the target audience these days (which I agree is an incredibly old target audience for comics) but for most of my time reading comics MY Flash has been Wally, MY Superman was the MOS version, Barbara was Oracle and so on and so forth.

A lot of this just feels like DC is picking winners and are tending to pick those winners from the Silver Age which I personally find astonishing because those readers that remember the Silver Age with fondness are 10 to 20 years older than me. They form a smaller portion of the current shrunken marketplace! And a good proportion of DC is now skewed towards that smaller portion? That just seems insane to me.

Expand the market past my generation? Absolutely, that would make complete sense but marginalize my generation in favor of the older generation? It was strange when Marvel did that with bringing back a lot of Seventies characters but 10 years later DC is going ten years further back to the Sixties? That's 50 years ago and I think a lot of people don't realize how far back that feels to those of us who didn't live through the sixties so I just have to point out that 50 years is the same time frame as 1938 was to 1988. 50 years of Superman. And as a kid when that anniversary was discussed it always seemed like that was an impossibly long time ago.

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Brad Krawchuk
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Posted: 07 June 2011 at 10:08pm \| IP Logged \| 5

Of all the titles to announce so far does anyone think the following will survive more than a YEAR...?

Frankenstein: Agent of SHADE

Justice League Dark - with Constantine, Deadman, Shade the Changing Man, and Madam Xanadu as members.

Batwing - about one of the "other" Batmen from Batman Inc.

Mr. Terrific

Grifter

Resurrection Man

I, Vampire

Voodoo

Captain Atom

Plus, we've got other things like a JLA by Jim Lee that won't last, even if he does a full 6 issues in 6 months there's someone else waiting in the wings, and I bet Johns probably won't stay on long-term like his Green Lantern, JSA, or former Flash runs. It'll be more like Booster Gold or Superboy - he'll get the ball rolling and then someone else will take over.

Then, we've got titles that will be virtually impenetrable to new readers. That would be all the Bat books, what with keeping the whole Batman Inc. thing going and having Dick, Damien, and Jason around, plus probably Tim still being Red Robin. Plus there are FOUR books with Batman as a solo character! What to pick up?

Then there's Superman, who will probably be single again which baffles me, since if they're going for Joe Public then all that guy knows is Superman hooks up with Lois Lane in "Lois and Clark", "Smallville", in the cartoons, and has a kid with her in "Superman:Returns". Plus, in the two TV series listed, they get MARRIED. Are you telling me the average person would be able to navigate the New Krypton storyline (that even I couldn't figure out a reading order for!) but that they'd be confused if they saw a married Superman in the books? Boy has DC got THAT backwards!

Then we get into a whole bunch of series written and drawn by the artists who couldn't keep a book monthly when they were JUST artists. That'd be The Flash, Batwoman, The Dark Knight... I'm sure they'll be on time if the guy who can't draw it in a month is also the one helping write it though, right?

Green Lantern, on the other hand, is basically just rolling on without losing anyone from the writing team. Johns, Tomasi, and Bedard are all still there. The rainbow corps are still there. There's still Blackest Night to wade through if a new reader wants background on that - and Blackest Night is nigh impossible to read in order in trade form.

Why is DC retooling things again? Hawkman is getting ANOTHER origin, Green Arrow is having his what - fourth, fifth? - first issue in 10 years. Roy is still Arsenal, Dick is still Nightwing, Batman is... younger? HOW?

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Flavio Sapha
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Posted: 07 June 2011 at 11:06pm \| IP Logged \| 6

Frankenstein: Agent of SHADE
Justice League Dark - with Constantine, Deadman, Shade the
Changing Man, and Madam Xanadu as members.
+++++++

Yoiks! The lunatics have TRULY taken over the asylum!

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Flavio Sapha
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Posted: 07 June 2011 at 11:08pm \| IP Logged \| 7

No, it's worse than that....the lunatics are being abused by the DC
staff!

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Petter Myhr Ness
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Posted: 08 June 2011 at 12:44am \| IP Logged \| 8

In addition to your list, Brad, I must admit to a morbid curiosity as to whether they're going to give Superman yet another origin story.

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Francesco Vanagolli
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Posted: 08 June 2011 at 2:08am \| IP Logged \| 9

I don't think they would give Superman a new origin story, Petter: remember, Secret Origin was written by Johns, and according to the newswe heard in these days, DC isn't going to throw away what Johns and Morrison did with the DCU.

An unmarried Superman would be a great deal, to me. Despite I like a lot of stories from the marriage era, I think that Superman shouldn't have his "happy ending". The key words for kids are "conflict", "tension", "pressure". A Superman who can do almost everything but cannot have the woman he loves is more relatable with a younger audience, in my opinion (ditto for Spider-Man). But the real mistake was letting Lois know Clark's secret. The marriage was just a consequence for this.

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Petter Myhr Ness
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Posted: 08 June 2011 at 2:24am \| IP Logged \| 10

You're probably right, but they've gone through so many Superman origin stories over the last few years, that one has to wonder.

As for the marriage, I'm in favour of an unmarried Superman. But only because I wish they hadn't gone in the marriage direction in the first place. It was a mistake, just as it was with Spider-Man.

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Glen Keith
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Posted: 08 June 2011 at 3:27am \| IP Logged \| 11

Whether or not you consider it a mistake, I really can�t see how one can equate Superman�s marriage with Spider-Man�s. Spidey�s marriage was a mistake as it fundamentally changed the tone and nature of the books by not only bringing too great a share of happiness to the stories, but too much prosperity as well. Not to mention that MJ wasn�t even his current girlfriend at the time, and that the wedding was uncomfortably shoehorned into the then current continuity in such a way that I don�t think many fans ever quite bought (I know I didn�t).

On the other hand, Superman�s marriage seemed all but inevitable, as that Lois goes with Clark like peanut butter with jelly. Every attempt to interject a new romantic rival into the mix has been a failure. No serious contender has ever been found to Lois, and the two characters have been all but married in the public eye for decades. Wedding them seemed to do little to change the nature of the character, and to my mind, even enriched him a bit more. It made him more relatable, not less.

Also, to tell the truth, I don�t see where having a Superman who can�t get the girl necessarily makes him more relatable. To be honest, the whole �I want her to like me as Clark� bit never really worked for me, particularly when you consider all the times Lois came �this close� to discovering the truth anyway. It always felt to me like Superman was playing with her emotions, constantly rejecting her in a way that wouldn�t let her move on, which makes him seem like an ass.

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Jonathan Stover
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Posted: 08 June 2011 at 4:21am \| IP Logged \| 12

Speaking of Justice League Dark (85% Cacao), a Hembeck parody from about 15 years ago:

Cheers, Jon

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