QUOTE: Then the Big Two don't care about you <g>.

Aww shucks lol lol lol

QUOTE: Don't even get me started on publishers who are insisting that story arcs have to run 6 issues to put the story into a trade paperback for resale.  I wouldn't mind this, except the majority of the stories I see nowadays could be told in 1-2 issues (silver age style).

Yes, I don't see why a 6 issue trade can't contain multiple great stories or one story that takes 3 hours to read. Not necessarily cause there's tons of words, because there's interesting things happening in it... 6 issues is 144 pages. It should take a while to go through. >:(

I don't really care what DC does anymore and I haven't cared about DC in a very long time, at least since the current regime came into power about ten years ago. And the funny thing is, when I dropped all the DC (and Marvel) Comics I was buying for years, I thought my love of comics was over too.

I was wrong though. John Byrne's Next Men showed me that my passion for comics still exists. And on the once a month that JB Next Men comes out, I get my butt down to the shop to buy it the day it comes out, just like the old days.

What I discovered is that my passion for comics never died. All it takes is one good comic to re-light the fire. John Byrne's Next Men does that, even if it is the only one out of all the comics published today that has that effect on me.  

There's now a piece on Bleeding Cool that throws out a lot of circumstantial evidence of a line-wide reboot.

Makes me a bit curious why they'd have the "Retroactive" event this close to a reboot. A bit confusing.

Apparently something's up and next month's solicitations are going to be a clue, I guess.

••

The first thing I remember that might qualify as a "reboot" (as opposed to an internal change referenced in the story itself) was when DC decided to "update" Superboy, keeping him from then on around ten years behind Superman. I think that happened around 1972, and it was accomplished as an editorial fiat, not a story point.

(For those with shorter memories -- or lives!! -- before this, Superboy had existed in a strange temporal netherworld that was equal parts the 1920s and the 1940s, with Pa Kent and others in Smallville driving generic Model A style cars, while Lana Lang sported outfits seen on high school girls around the time Superboy first appeared in the comics.)

I'd love to see the multi-coloured Lanterns wiped from existence!

There's now a piece on Bleeding Cool that throws out a lot of circumstantial evidence of a line-wide reboot.

Makes me a bit curious why they'd have the "Retroactive" event this close to a reboot. A bit confusing.

Apparently something's up and next month's solicitations are going to be a clue, I guess.

***

That post gives me a headache and seems to show everything that's wrong with current comics in one fell swoop.

That, Knut, is a work of art, a monument to just how screwed up it all is now.   

Thank goodness for Dark Horse, IDW and - *gasp* - Image!

Maybe we've gone full circle again and headed back to the early 60's where the little company that could showed the big company how it was done!

Unfortunately Marvel is on the wrong side of the fence this time around.

Aaron,

The comic industry is in great shape these days, as they split off characters into different titles that merge, diverege and converge, get renumbered, go back to old numbering, get renumbered again and so on and so forth.

Add that to the decompressed storytelling, company-wide events with extraneous spin-offs, limted access to new books through a distribution monopoly selling only through specialty stores catering specifically for comics, the popularity of video games/technology over comics, people in charge who continually blow deadlines in the name of art and vanity, and add to that the fact that the charcaters are living off of films and merchandising rather than the printed page and it shows you that the industry is in good shape!