So DC rebooted everything (again) with the launch of their 'New 52' comics line. This came after the company-wide event "FlashPoint," wherein Flash travels to an alternate reality & sees how screwy everything got, and then travels back. Now everyone has seams & Superman wears pants....
Instead of starting immediately with all the origins, most of the titles jump immediately into the present... MOST of them do this... Some begin with origin stories, which is really confusing if you're like me and trying to fit everything in chronologically. Teen Titans sees a Red Robin (Tim Drake) organizing the group for the first time, Supergirl lands on earth for the first time, Superboy wakes up in a clone solution. Throw in a few new characters, and a few others that have just been hanging around (like we as readers should know who they are because they're important now), and you have DC's self-titled "New 52."
What's worse, Action Comics has Supes in jeans jumping around while the Superman titled book has him in some kinda Superman costume with a bunch of intersecting seams and often make the shield symbol... eh...
And all that said, I'm actually cool with a book running that tells the origin while simultaneously another title being the current events line. The problem is: this is the only character they did that with. The Justice League first few issues are a sort-of flashback to when they first formed the league, but then the next arch is back to the present. I wish the origins would have been a mini-series called *trumpet sounds* Justice League Origins...
Other titles are launched in this "New 52" reality by way of continuing their titles as though nothing's different. Green Lantern, Batman & Damien, etc...
What's still more confusing is that some titles kept the continuity already established except for like one or two minor or major details: Tim Drake was never called Robin. Only Red Robin. Okay, so that's minor, but... Barbara Gordon was shot by the Joker... BUT NOT PERMANENTLY PARALYZED! So she's Batgirl now. Okay, so that's pretty major... (not sure what happened with Casandra Caine or Stephanie Brown yet, but I guess I'll just have to find them in this crazy new continuity).
Oh, and Supes and Lois aren't doing it. Not sure if that's major or not but poor Clark's not gettin any, so that's a bummer.
Anyway, with all these changes, it's fair to say it's a reboot, but without completely getting rid of the old continuity, is it really a reboot? It's a renumbering, for sure... But I think DC had difficulties with this one. I imagine 1/2 of the writers / editors / execs were on one side saying "Don't change our iconic characters!" The others were on the other side saying the opposite, "We need a complete reboot with the new numbering!" They eventually settled on this: "Let's renumber everything, change only SOME of the origins, and after a few months go back and tell all the origins we didn't tell with some zero issues."
And that's where I'm starting from. I read a few issues into the New52 (mainly Aquaman, Superman, Teen Titans, Supergirl, Batgirl - to name a few), and when I discovered the zero issues went back and told a story about before the New52 on most characters, I began from zero. That's where this blog starts. While I won't review in-depth each and every New52 Zero issue, I'll try to collect my thoughts as I transverse the DC Universe from the New52's beginning to the newest DC event: Convergence (beginning the month of this writing - 4/17/15).
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