The big news in comics in recent weeks is news of the mega DC reboot, the one where DC will renumber all their series and start from number one. In addition to the mere numerical changes, there are going to be some huge canon shattering changes to the universe and some of its more beloved personalities. The news has been mixed, and my view? I'm in the facepalm 'why do they have to do this category?' Listen, let me make something clear. I'm not against change in comics. I complain all the time about how western comics rely on the same tropes that have kept the system running since the Golden Age of the 1930s-40s. Change should come naturally, development should come as the result of the various events that touch a character's lives, big or small, and should be consistent with a character's personality. Personalities change, people change, but it should not come as the result of some Deus Ex Machine like DC is trying to come up with.

Follow up:

Not only is it unwieldy and clearly a desperate gimmick, it's something they've already done at least 3 times before. Crisis of Infinite Earths was brilliant. It streamlined the canon (for a while, at least) and really changed comics, it helped ushered in an age where comics transformed from being a disposable form of entertainment for kids into a form of storytelling that could be taken seriously.

Then a little while later they did it again with Infinite Crisis. And Countdown. Not only were they writing disasters (I'll kill you to death) they just clogged up the pipes and convoluted the canon. The reason that big companies do these crazy events because they hope the changes in the story will attract new customers who don't have to be familiar with the old storylines in order to understand what's happening now. And I can understand that. One of the reasons I avoided buying comics for so long was for this reason. I didn't like being lost. But one of the reasons I was getting so lost was because I became a young adult/teen after these crazy events. These events that initially were supposed to clear up storylines just made thing harder to follow because the companies were forced to backtrack to pacify angry fanboys. They end up drastically changing beloved characters for no logical reason except to make them more likable or 'edgy', without any kind of natural progression--making it feel fake.

And now they are doing it again.

How do I know this will only anger fans and drive away more people than bringing them forward? Well, because of things like this:

This is what they are going to do to Harley Quinn. Harley was a canon import, a character that original showed up only in the show, Batman the Animated series. She was so popular that they stuck her in the regular continuity. Harley was original a sadistic psychiatrist who worked at Arkum Asylum and fell in love the Joker, becoming his sometime girlfriend/minion and had a weird and masochistic relationship. She was basically a female version of the Joker. I cannot begin to describe what is wrong with that picture, let along go into what the new storyline involving her was.

Truthfully, I got my information of the DC universe from the cartoons that were on in the 90s: Batman the Animated Series, Justice League, The Adventures of Superman. But when I started buying my comics the fact that was I missing information wasn't a big deal, a few issues into my regular series and I knew what was going on. But when they do this huge upchuck of the universe, I am, once again, forced to read 6 or 7 series just to know what the hell is happening in my one. Which I hate. It's stupid marketing decisions like this that make me crawl back to my safe familiar territory of manga, where when the story is done, it's done.

DC, if your stories are getting stale, hire new writers. Once you filter out the man-on-man porn, a lot of fan fictions are brilliant, written by competent writers who understand and love the material. Or if you really have squeezed everything there is out of a story, let it end. You don't have to kill off characters in order for that to happen, but it wouldn't hurt of if you let some of your guys hang up their capes and say goodbye. It's certainly a lot more dignified than whatever the hell you've got planned.