Definitely sounds like we’re heading toward mass confusion. I hope not, but it would certainly be consistent with what we’ve seen from DC recently. They seem to have an incredibly tough time getting all of their ducks in a line. Sigh.

“Only go with what you’re told or shown in the comics.”

Except that the comics themselves will necessarily be referencing the parts of past continuity that are still in continuity, and the people who are going to be the most confused by it — and the most discouraged by it — are going to be precisely those mythical “new readers” that DC is seeking to attract, because part of the whole point of slapping a big “NUMBER ONE” on an issue is to tell readers, “You shouldn’t need to know anything about this character from before this issue in order to be able to follow this story.”

Ironically enough, if there was NO retconning going on, then this would actually be MORE accessible, because all those first issues would just say, “Okay, here’s a quick summary of what’s happened so far, so here’s where we’re going now.” Likewise, a total from-the-ground-up reboot would be even easier, because it would say, “Forget everything you might have read in any other Superman story — this is how it is from now on.”

The problem is, much like “Brand New Day,” DC is saying, “Okay, MOST of what’s happened before is still the same, but SOME of it has been changed, and those things that were changed are IMPORTANT, or else we wouldn’t have bothered to change them, but we’re not going to tell you EXACTLY what’s changed and what hasn’t in the past, even though we’re still going to be referencing the past and treating a lot of it as a given.”

As much as they complain about retcons, it’s actually the most long-term fans who are the most willing and able to wrap their heads around retcons, because NON-fans don’t even know what the term “retcon” MEANS, and unless you’re doing a TOTAL reboot, where EVERYTHING has changed (everyone gets that Christopher Nolan’s Batman is a different character from Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher’s Batman), most mainstream audiences are going to interpret such half-measure changes as being confusing and not worth their time.

As terrible as Michael Bay’s Transformers films have been, they did not represent PARTIAL reboots of the preexisting continuities of the Simon Furman comics or the Sunbow animated series or Beast Wars or anything else — they were simply free to be their own thing. By contrast, Bryan Singer’s “Superman Returns” played a pick-and-choose game with the continuity of the Richard Donner films, constantly referencing them without spelling out what parts of them were not in continuity (according to Singer himself, Superman II was in continuity for his film, but Zod’s arrival on Earth was not, which makes absolutely no sense).

I’m choosing to see all these #1′s as fresh starts. If there is history behind these characters, I hope it’s explained as a means if developing the current story, not to appease people.

I wish they had done a hard reboot with new origins for those characters with current origins steeped in continuity (Tim Drake, Hawkman, Donna Troy).

@ K-Box:
I guess the issue that I have with all the angst over what DC is doing is that people are getting all upset and venting their upset on the interwebs over “the way that DC seems to be approaching” this. I prefer to give them the benefit of the doubt and actully SEE what they’re doing before getting upset. In truth, if DC gets it even 80% right, then it’s going to be an exciting bunch o’ comics to read.

Sean R-B:

I guess my problem with giving this reboot or relaunch or whatever it is the benefit of the doubt is that it’s being spearheaded by literally the EXACT SAME PEOPLE who have been in charge of the DC Universe during the period when it’s gotten so convoluted that they themselves decreed that a reboot or relaunch or whatever was necessary in the first place.

That’s like running a restaurant into the ground by taking a dump in all the entrees, and then pointing out that all the food tastes like crap as a result, and THEN insisting that you should be made a member of the health department for correctly diagnosing the stomach-turning toxicity that you yourself went out of your way to create (see also: Joe Quesada claiming that he was “fixing” Spider-Man” with “Brand New Day,” when he himself already had total editorial control over the character’s direction from 2001-2007, an era which he himself asserted made it necessary to “fix” the character in the first place).

Pretty much everything that’s wrong with DC right now can be laid at Dan DiDio’s feet, and yet, we’re supposed to have faith that he’s going to save us from the sinkhole that he turned the company into? That’s like hiring Bernie Madoff to fix the economy.

See this is my problem with DC’s approach. They say they’re trying to make it accessible for new readers, I don’t like that but I can at least respect it. I can understand a lot of changes from a business perspective and to make it easier for good stories to be written. But then they start with all these little fixes and assure us it’s not a reboot. They’re basically saying “These titles are doing crappy because they’re confusing to people. But even though it’s a shared universe we aren’t going to change these titles because people are buying them.”