Disclaimer: I do not own any characters from DC Comics in any way, shape or form. Any similarities to anyone else's work is purely coincidental
...Que Bueno...?
Part 1 – Death of a Legacy
The DCnU reboot / revamp / rehash / cop-out really made my blood boil when I heard about it. Although I'm not a hardcore fan, I liked the DCU; despite the trend of gory, pointless, death and maiming recently, it was comfortable to be immersed in, no matter how dark things became. I never cared about having to look up the long and complex histories of each character; the fact that the DCU was so big made it feel more realistic to me. The only downside was that they seem to be addicted to Crises. Every time a Crisis happens, things just get more complicated, like strain hardening in a metal; the major changes interact with each other, causing new problems where they meet which are harder to fix. DC needs to learn that they can't solve every problem with a crisis, because sooner or later they make new ones. Marvel somehow avoids all this; their universe has a complex history, but they make it work without reboots.
I understand that they want to make more money by drawing in some new readers to both their comics and their new digital comics, but how did they actually believe that they could get away with throwing the baby out with the bathwater? If DC made soap operas on TV instead of comics and announced that they would do this, I can't imagine the level of havoc that would create. How come it's okay to effectively erase the Justice Society of America and the Teen Titan's histories, but Batman and Green Lantern's can stay as they are, just because their comics sell better? When did 'legacy' become a dirty word? Why have so many characters been redesigned with fugly new costumes (actually, fugly is putting it mildly)? Wouldn't all these changes just confuse the non-comic reading public and new readers even more, instead of making it easier for them to jump onboard? For example, since the 'Blackest Night' and 'Brightest Day' events still happened, readers will need to pick up the trade paperbacks to understand what's going on; these will tell them one thing, but the DCnU will tell them something else entirely, forcing the new readers to resort to Google to look up all those 'benched' characters who don't appear in the DCnU and they'll ask questions, leading to more retcons to solve these problems to utilise said characters and will eventually lead to another reboot-causing Crisis, which will drive away the new readers.
I wondered deep down if there was some kind of conspiracy to destroy the legacies within the DCU and that's when it hit me; what if there really was some kind of evil mastermind behind it all. That way, if the DCnU blows up in the faces of DC comics' editors and they revert to the old DCU (DCtrU?), they could swipe my idea and use it to undo most of the changes (if anyone could pull it off, Geoff Johns could). Perhaps I'm being too hard on DC comics; they may have had good reasons and this venture may turn out well for them, but I can't, in good conscience, accept that what I spent so many years dabbling in will disappear because DC would rather cop-out and use another massive reboot to undo years of good stories and bench good characters than just making gradual changes.
What follows is the musings of the villain responsible for all this. Please note that information has been rather scarce, so I don't know for certain what will be kept and what will go, so if things don't turn out as bad as I think, then consider this a worst case scenario.
How do you destroy a hero? To answer that, we must identify what a hero is. I've always thought of a true hero as an ideal to which ordinary people can aspire to; a shining example of the better traits of humanity. In this case, killing superheroes isn't enough, because ideas are almost impossible to kill. If I could kill a famous one, someone would take their place eventually, because of the desire to keep the idea alive; thus a legacy is born, and with that legacy comes immortality. Therefore you have two choices; get them early or destroy the legacy completely. Unluckily for me, most of my enemies have established very distinguished legacies.
Upon exploration of the Multiverse, I came across Earth Prime, where we exist in comic books, and our lives can be controlled by the actions of writers, artists, etc and where I learned the secrets of my enemies. Currently on New Earth, the cornerstone of the multiverse and where all my enemies live has been subjected to extensive temporal alterations by the time traveller called Professor Zoom, resulting in an alternate reality replacing the original. The people at DC comics refer to this event as 'Flashpoint': regardless of the event's cause, it has provided me with an opportunity to create chaos on an unprecedented scale. By using my powers to influence the editors at DC comics, I convinced them they would profit by making the universe they'd created more appealing to the youth of today. At first, they wanted to make small changes, but I persuaded them that a complete overhaul was required, under my guidance of course. The idea was that these changes would rob as many heroes of their histories and legacies as possible (granted, my control wasn't total, so some would benefit from these changes, but you can't win them all). By September, DC comics will reboot / revamp / extensively change their universe, creating a new one, a DCnU.
They 'updated' every hero's costume, by making the majority look like rejects from the 90's (in other words, ugly as sin and harder to conceal) and giving the rest an unnecessary armour-like appearance (why the dickens does Superman need armour?); they ruined some perfectly good comics, with good creative teams who were on a roll, by forcing the writers to rush their stories for the big reboot/ revamp or whatever they call it (Teen Titans, Secret Six, etc) and they cancelled some comics and replaced them with less ones that were more or less the same, but with whole new creative teams and different characters (i.e. replacing Secret Six with Suicide Squad).
I told them that the public needed their main characters needed to be forever young and timeless thirty-something's, so they altered continuity by erasing entire chapters of the DCU in order to compress the timeline of modern day events into five years instead of ten; that way, the public, who couldn't possibly research a character's history over the internet or by reading back issues or graphic novels, could have younger heroes, whom they would find easier to relate to, and not have to bother as much with the more obscure or legacy characters. In this new universe, Superman was the first superhero (or at least the first public one, I don't control everything about this transition). This means the JSA, who were the first superhero team no longer exists, therefore no Infinity Inc, no Jack Knight as Starman and so on. Who cares about the fact that it just screws up their already convoluted timeline further. They also decided to fudge things up by leaving Batman and Green Lantern's histories more or less untouched, while changing everyone else's, increasing confusion further.
To my delight, past and present Teen Titans members became the usual casualties in DCs major events, so it wasn't hard to ensure that they will suffer considerably during this period of transition; entire chapters of the team's history will probably be erased completely, and many popular characters will be benched in the DCnU. A list of these, at this moment in time, includes Donna Troy, Jesse Quick, Raven, Beast Boy and Wally West. Cyborg gets to be a founding member of the JLA, meaning he probably never had time to be a member of the Teen Titans and Starfire is now a member of a team of 'heroes' called the Outlaws, lead by Red Hood, an ex-Robin who was supposed to be dead, who will probably spend their time killing villains and helping her learn about humanity (didn't she already do that?). Unfortunately, even my power was not enough to completely erase characters from continuity, or to guarantee erasure of continuity. Sooner or later, the benched ones will return, although I can try to alter them enough to make them a pale imitation of their former selves who will probably be hated by the older fans, or have an unnecessary revision to their history, further complicating things. If they end up dead or dying in a pointless cameo, then I'll be happy.
I showed them that the public needed simple characters, which couldn't be related to if they were in relationships of any sort; from now on, no kids (goodbye Lian Harper, daughter of Speedy I / Arsenal / Red Arrow/ Roy Harper: no Helena Kyle, daughter of Catwoman/ Selina Kyle), no marriages, because everyone loves bachelors (goodbye Lois and Clark, Barry and Iris, etc), and no complicated characters who affected any others, no matter what rolls they played, so they will be benched for at least a few years (goodbye JSA, the previously mentioned Titans, most Young Justice members, the Secret Six, Stephanie Brown, Cassandra Cain, Power Girl, etc). Heck, they even set back character development by 'fixing' characters unnecessarily (making Barbara Gordon Batgirl again and erasing / limiting her tenure as Oracle, making Dick Grayson Nightwing again, completely rebooting Blue Beetle III, etc)
The thing I'm most proud of, though, is the downsizing of the Clark Kent side of Superman's persona, so that he can be an alien living on Earth, instead of an Earthman who happens to be an alien. The main reason for why people related to Superman was his humanity; even though he was an alien with the power of a god, it was his inability to be seduced by his own power that made him special. He doesn't hate humanity for holding him back because he was always Clark Kent at heart and was always able to empathize with humanity as a result, like the shepherd among the sheep. Granted, even if Clark Kent was gone completely, his heroism would still be there, but how can he inspire humanity if he isn't really a part of it? It was a stroke of genius though: erasing the marriage to Lois Lane and killing off the Kents before his career got started ensures that his humanity, stunting the facet of his personality that made him appealing. By making him the first Superhero in this continuity (or at least the first to go public), the JSA and their legacy was removed from history, making him the sole example to heroes everywhere, and thus more vulnerable. His legacy is tarnished as well now by reboots; now Supergirl is some moody teenager who isn't even fond of humans (and just when they'd made her likable again) and Superboy has been made a living weapon under the control of some evil secret government organisation, Project N.O.W.H.E.R.E. (and just when I was starting to enjoy his past adventures). What will that S-shield stand for in this brave new world, if what it stood for before was 'what you do'...?
The editors think this is going to draw new readers...good for them. If it actually does, it'll surprise the heck out of me. In the end, it does not matter what they believe, so long as all my enemies are forgotten and everything they have achieved over the years is turned to dust! Maybe then, someone might remember me...
The new DC: there's no stopping them now!
Now that I've told you my scheme, you may try to deduce my identity...oh, what the heck, I love to gloat; it's a flaw that I'm working on.
Ask yourself this: who can traverse the Multiverse at will and has the power to affect a person's history? Who would be glad to see many characters 'benched' indefinitely? Who would have the power to sway the minds of the DC editors to make such drastic changes? Who would love to cause this much chaos? Who would want legacies to be destroyed / ruined?
In short, who would really benefit from all these changes, aside from the 'new blood' DC is hoping to attract with this scheme?
Well, that's it from me, please review and if you have any theories as to who the mastermind might be, feel free to mention them in your review.
Coming up next is the identity of the mastermind behind the reboot and an introduction for Superboy Prime if he ever got a TV show (when hell freezes over).