DO OVER!!!

Sorry, true believers, for taking so long to update my blog. There's been many, many new developments in my life since my last post (some extremely good and some not good at all) but the one that I wanted to touch upon tonight is something that's been in the media for a few weeks now: DC Comics reinvisioning themselves.

As I write this post I realized I'm wearing a Flash t-shirt that a friend got me when I was a groomsman in his wedding. I've been a fan of Superman since I was old enough to know who the character was and what he was about. Heck, it's ingrained in my DNA that when the John Williams score for Superman kicks in I want to stand up and salute like it's my own version of the National Anthem. If you look around my studio room you'd see a collection of action figures, some of which are Superman, Batman, Flash and even Aquaman. I also own a Batman shirt (which a train conductor recently told me I needed to leave with him because he thought it was awesome... and it is which is why I bought it), a Blue Lantern Flash shirt (which was my pride and joy find from last year's Baltimore Comic Con), a Superboy shirt (I didn't realize at the time it was a Superboy one, I just thought the S shield on a black shirt was badass... it was before I picked up Teen Titans after Geoff Johns took it over... sue me!), and a "distressed" version of the Superman shield. I also have more than a few of the good DC comic movies in my collection of DVDs as well as seasons of Smallville and Justice League Unlimited (which was a brilliant, brilliant show).

Am I the biggest DC fan of all time? I doubt it. Not by a long shot. I know someone who could rattle on and on about DC continuity since the Golden Age of comics. I'm sure there's many fans out there who could trump my comic collection and my overall knowledge of DC and it's universe or if you want to go one step further into geekdom, it's multiverse. Nope, I am humble enough to know when to say when. But that doesn't mean I don't care or have some opinion about the upcoming September event of DC Comics overhauling everything and starting from the ground up.

For those who might not know, at the moment DC is publishing a title called Flashpoint which finds the Flash in an alternate reality from the standard DC continuity. In this reality, for instance, Bruce Wayne never became Batman. He was killed, along with his mother, when the Waynes were mugged in Crime Alley. Thomas Wayne, Bruce's dad, was the lone survivor and became Batman. An interesting twist for sure. Apparently the wrap up for Flashpoint will lead into the DC universe being overhauled with all of their characters skewing younger, updates for their costumes and possibly origins, and 52 different titles starting off with a #1 issue.

That's bold to say the least.

The changes are out there for all to see online, most of which I've been following on bleedingcool.com since the news broke. If DC wanted to get people talking and at least curious over their big changes, I'd say they got their wish as many, many, many fanboys and girls have thrown their two cents into the ring. I'm not looking to be the jerky guy online badmouthing or singing the gospel of what DC is doing. I just want to call it like I see it.

My initial reaction, beyond "cool, let's see what they'll do" is it reminds me a lot of how I met my friend Mark. Don't worry, I'm not going to get sad here. It just reminds me of when we first met while I was working part-time at the local comic store. He was kicking around ideas on how he'd do an Ultimate Superman title, since Marvel was rolling out their Ultimate line for people who wanted to have less continuity to bog down their reading and more streamlined (at times) storytelling (as well as the ability to do whatever they wanted compared to being owned to continuity in the normal, non-ultimate titles). His idea for Superman was an analog to diabetes, something Mark knew about all too well. Superman would absorb the sun's rays, just like in the normal books, but if he didn't use those powers his body would find a way to expel them. Other than his face and hands, Superman would be covered as much as possible to limit his consumption of solar radiation, while Ultimate Clark Kent would be the sort of kid that would look weird because he'd be wearing long sleeves and jeans on even the hottest of days. Some of the backstory for Superman was reworked by both of us as we took on the idea and worked together to spitball ideas, sometimes til 4 in the morning at the parking lot of Applebees on Wednesday nights. We had the idea that Krypton would be like the Roman empire, conquering planets, taking what's useful from them and then moving on, sometimes enslaving entire races. Some of those races start a revolt which leads to a kamikaze run to destroy Krypton's sun, which does manage to destroy Krypton but it also gives birth to the abomination known to fans of Superman as Doomsday.

Mark and I were very proud of the way we turned some of the mythology on it's ear. It became such an epic undertaking that we couldn't explain to anyone on the outside even HALF of the ideas we cooked up. Just off the cuff, we had Martha Kent passing away, leaving Clark to help take care of his elderly father while also trying to hold down a job AND be Superman. We had Lois Lane very skeptical of who Superman was and actually being somewhat smitten with normal old Clark Kent for once. We also threw everyone for a loop to reimagine Lex Luthor as a woman and start her introduction to the reader in a very intimate scene with Bruce Wayne where the majority of the dialogue was "Ooooh, Bruce!" followed by an "Ohhhh, Lex!" a few panels later. As a fan of the normal continuity, I would have turned that page faster than the Flash to see what the heck was going on in that moment.

We also worked up the story to a point where one of the giant tent pole events was called Doomsday, and event where for 24 hours in Ultimate DC time the entire universe got to feel the pain and agony that Doomsday would inflict. We had Bruce Wayne Batman getting killed trying to hold the line against Doomsday at the "Welcome to Gotham City" sign. We had the fastest man alive, Flash, trying to distract Doomsday from hurting innocents (in Ultimate DC we had the Flash as a loving nod to the hope that Christopher Reeve could someday walk again, so we had the Flash as a paralized athlete who got a second chance on life when Superman willingly let scientists research his DNA, helping cure the Flash of his paralysis), until Doomsday finally catches him and drags him from Keystone City all the way to Metropolis where he calls out Superman. We also decided we'd let Superman fall, that was it, case closed. And then once we spitballed more ideas we discovered that we figured out a way to bring him back that actually made sense. And we ran with it again, standing outside until 4 am just kicking around these ideas.

There's so much history to those ideas. There's so many epic moments that just the thought of them made me get chills. We had so many concepts to kick around, making the familiar new and different enough that Mark and I wanted to visit those worlds. We loved seeing characters like Green Arrow getting on a super human show that was a nod to Survivor and try to become the hero of Star City. We loved turning Batman into "Darth Vader but in Gotham" as I pitched to him shortly after his Ultimate Superman idea. I still loved the idea of Tim Drake stepping into the shoes of Batman after being trained by Dick Grayson in the wake of Bruce's death. The poor guy is in over his head, using his detective skills from when he was part of the GCPD to try and solve crimes, but taking too long and letting other crimes happen while he researched. Finally at his breaking point, when he's on the trail of a super villain serial killer known as Azrael and they meet for the first time, Azrael greets him with a "Thank you for helping me do the good Lord's work in Gotham" and Tim's only reply, finally embracing the rage that helped fuel Bruce to become the Batman, "God doesn't live in Gotham" as their showdown begins.

After the idea of Ultimate DC was huge enough in it's mythology to crush an elephant, Mark and I looked at each other and realized how far we came verses how much work we had really managed to accomplish. Plus, the simple fact was we'd never be invited to play with the toys we wanted to play with in the way that we were enjoying unless it was in simple fan fiction. When we came to that realization, we both agreeably walked away from our Ultimate DC world. We would definitely return from time to time, kicking around ideas to build more and more mythology, more and more ways of reworking characters, and each time we'd smile and laugh and sigh realizing that the light of day would never be brought to our passion project. But the thing about DC's new relaunch for me is I get to revisit that playground with Mark one more time. So even if this new idea for DC doesn't work out in the long run, thank you DC Comics for allowing me to revisit the idea for the universe that Mark and I both had a hand in creating, not out of wanting to one up you or think we could do better. We just liked seeing if different could still feel the same, but in such a way to keep people wondering what would happen next.

Even though I just threw so many ideas at you, poor readers, there's still so much under the surface that it would take most of the night for me to try and relate it to you. The point is, for better, worse, indifferent or even excited, DC is willing to go where Mark and I began to tread back in 2005 and 2006. I'm sure their versions of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and all of the rest of DC's pantheon of heroes and villains won't be what I had envisioned 5 years ago with my best friend. But I am more than willing to give it a shot and see what happens next. Honestly, when the news hit that the first of the 52 comics they're releasing as #1 issues is a new Justice League with Geoff Johns AND Jim Lee working on it, they already sealed the deal of having my money for that issue. There's still much to say about this topic, and I do plan to write more on my thoughts. For the moment, just stay tuned and don't stop believin'.