1. The “new” Superman will be somewhere around 20 years old.

Those of us in our thirties and forties and older have a very specific vision of how old Superman should be, and that vision is largely informed by the portrayals of George Reeves and Christopher Reeve and the drawings of artists like Curt Swan and John Byrne. To us, Superman is an Adult. Even though DC tried to peg his age at 29 for a long time (are they still doing that?), he was a full-grown man who had his shit figured out.

If you’re in your mid-twenties or younger and you’re into Superman, however — and especially if you’re not a current comics reader, the people DC’s trying to hook — you’ve mainly seen him played by Tom Welling and Brandon Routh. Superman, then, is more someone in his early twenties, still figuring his way into the world. Not only does have this massive power, he’s trying to learn exactly what his place is, what his responsibilities really are, what it means to be a hero, to be Superman.

So I bet that DC lines up the “new” Superman to reflect that younger sensibility. And y’know what? I’m totally fine with that, as I think it’s a valid approach to take and plenty of good stories could come out of it.

(Be honest: when you saw the Lee-drawn cover to Justice League #1, you first thought that was Superboy and not Superman, didn’t you?)

For decades, Superman has been presented as the guy everyone in the DCU looks up to for inspiration and advice — he’s the Dad of the DCU (and Wonder Woman is the Mom and Batman is Crazy Uncle Earl).

But I don’t think that’ll be true anymore. Superman won’t be the fountainhead from which all heroism in the DCU springs — while still competent and powerful, we’ll now see him earning that respect from his elders. And by “elders” I mainly mean Batman (see point two below).

Also, I guarantee you he’s not married to Lois anymore. More on Lois and Superman to come in a later post.

2. Batman will be largely unchanged.

Batman goes under “if it ain’t broke.” Creatively and financially, Bats is in good shape right now, so I assume he’ll largely get left alone. (The same might not hold true for his extended family.)

I can see Batman filling some of the void created by the youthenizing (as opposed to euthanizing) of Superman. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Batman as less an urban legend and more as an inspirational figure. I also wouldn’t be surprised to see Batman as a mentor to Superman (possibly reluctantly so), a relationship structure we’ve never really seen played out with them but that would make total sense given the current view of each in the mainstream media.

As I talked about yesterday, Grant Morrison’s been building a huge Batman story for several years that’s clearly not done. And the Batman books seem to be just about the only books in DC’s lineup that aren’t bringing their current story arcs to an end with their August-shipping issues. I supsect there will be changes to the details of his origin and status quo, but I doubt they’ll be all that severe.

Dick Grayson, on the other hand…

3. If this change sticks, we’ll be spending the next five to ten years adding back in everything that gets removed.

Let’s say, just for sake of argument, that in the new DC timeline, Barry Allen never died. There was no Crisis, he never sacrificed himself to save the universe, Wally never took over as the Flash, never got shunted aside and ignored when Geoff Johns decided to bring Barry back. Wally remained Kid Flash — and, if there’s a bunch of de-aging going on, might just still be Kid Flash. (Personally, I’m betting that the new team of Teen Titans will have somewhat of a retro feel to its lineup.)

In that case… there’s no Impulse. Bart Allen would have no place in this realigned continuity. But given enough time, someone will make a case for him and find a way to work him back in.

If Superman’s twenty-ish, what happens to Superboy, who generally seems to be about eighteen these days? Do we end up with a twelve-year-old Connor Kent? (That might actually be interesting.)

While I don’t expect DC’s creators to slavishly imitate and re-engineer the stories that came before — that would be totally against the point of this reboot — I’m sure we’ll see “missing” characters or variations on those characters start to show up in the new timeline, much in the way the early years of the Ultimate universe were littered with alternate versions of existing mainstream Marvel heroes.

4. At least one previously white hero will now be black, and a surprising number of people will totally lose their shit over it.

Do you remember how many people freaked right the hell out when it was revealed that Heimdall would be played by Idris Elba in Thor? People’s heads straight-up exploded with oh-of-course-I’m-not-racist rage, and that was over friggin’ Heimdall, a character who could at best be called “minor.”

So can you imagine what those people will do if, say, Dick Grayson or Tim Drake all of a sudden has always been African-American? Or Lois Lane or Jimmy Olsen? None of those characters are in any way defined by their race, but I guarantee you that if that race gets changed, the comics blogosphere will go apopletic. 

And I will be very, very disappointed to be proven right.

(Though maybe it would lead to more idiot-bashing from Comics Alliance, which would be just fine with me. They’re good at it.)

5. Only about thirty to thirty-five of the fifty-two launch titles will be ongoing series.

I’m betting on a ton of one-shots and mini-series that will be used to define new takes on characters and flesh out this new world, but no way are they moving forward with fifty-two new ongoings. As David Uzumeri said on Comics Alliance today, I’m not sure there’s even fifty-two quality creative teams in all of comics, much less enough to make sure each of these proposed fifty-two books is a quality product.

Some questions that popped into my head about DC’s Universal Reboot, and some answers I thought up for those questions based on what we know so far:

The most obvious question: is this a stunt?

Is this something they’re going to revert in a year, something that just leads up to some other event where they’ll return to the current status quo?

I sincerely hope not. That’s not because of any hatred for the current situation – I mean, it is what it is – but I’d really be curious to see what an entirely new sustained take on the DC Universe would look like. It seems that a year is fairly standard for all-new, all-different situations, but I hope this reboot does well enough creatively and financially to make it stick.

If DC’s ever going to try a massive reboot like this – and let’s face it, they’re infinitely more likely to try it than Marvel ever will be – then they’re doing it the way it looks like they’d need to, to pull the adhesive bandage off with one big jerk. But if they want the wound to heal, they’ll have to leave it off and not patch it back up.

It’s going to piss off a lot of fans, to be sure. We comics folk sure seem to like things to stay the same. We like the illusion of change, but if any change is too great, we want it rolled back as soon as there’s a good opportunity (or even before). If we’re suddenly being told that everything is different and that it’s going to stay that way, that’s going to be a mighty big dump in our collective cereal. 

How are established DC creators taking this development?

It’s going to piss off a lot of creators, too – what effect does this massive reboot have on something like what Grant Morrison’s been building with Batman, Incorporated, for instance? He has a years-long story he’s been working on – is that entirely undone now as we get a new take on Batman? Morrison’s notoriously kind of prickly about his treatment from the major super-hero companies; this could be the sort of thing that would make him take his ball and go home.

Unless, of course, this whole line-wide reboot ties into Morrison’s Multiversity concept, and Johns and Lee got him on board at the start. If that were the case – honestly, if the multiverse is involved _at all_ – that would be a marker on the “everything gets undone in a year” side of the board.

(UPDATE: They’re now saying that Morrison has finally been given one of the Superman books, so I guess he’s cool with it. And I bet that definitely means Multiversity is part of whatever’s going on. As much as I wouldn’t want to see him end his Batman run if he wasn’t ready (though we don’t yet know if that’s the case or not), having him on one of the main Superman books would be pretty much the bestest thing ever.)

I’d imagine a great many creators would be excited about getting in at the start of something that’s going to get a huge amount of attention, at the possibility of telling fresh stories that aren’t tied down to all the history that’s come before. But a lot of creators like that history and will, I’m sure, be less than thrilled. It’ll be very interesting to see the launch books and creative teams.

Does the renumbering really matter? They’re really going to renumber Action Comics and Detective Comics?

We don’t know for certain as I write this, but yeah, it looks like they’re really gonna do it, and no, it really doesn’t matter. Sure, it’s cool to realize that these books have been published continuously with the same numbering since the 1930’s, but it doesn’t really matter — whatever the number, we know the history. We’ve had so many renumberings and new volumes that those issue numbers don’t have the meaning they once did. (Do you have any idea what issue number Sports Illustrated or Time is up to?)

And I’ll admit it will be kinda cool to have a new Action Comics #1, but only because it hasn’t been done before. Just this once, DC, you hear me?

If DC is serious about this universal reboot, they couldn’t leave a couple of books out of it. The fact that they’re willing to go this somewhat drastic step is a sign that this step might really be permanent (well, as permanent as anything gets in comics).

What does this mean for the Earth-One original graphic novels?

Oh, ha ha ha… I’m sorry, I couldn’t quite keep a straight face even asking that question.

Honestly, the success of Superman OGN probably helped spur this massive-reboot idea along — it shows that people outside the current fanbase, readers I’m sure DC is eager to get their hooks into, don’t mind that the details are different. Those new readers aren’t as invested in the particulars as much as they are the fundamental concept of the characters. Whether Superman’s a 19-year-old kid or a 30-year-old man doesn’t really matter as much as that he’s Superman and does Superman-y things in a Superman-y way.

I wonder if there’s any chance of Johns’ ideas for Earth One Batman making their way into the “real” Batman’s history…?

What’s all this about day-and-date digital?

Underneath the new number ones and the flashy Jim Lee costumes, it’s easy to lose sight of the single most important aspect of this announcement: major-company super-hero releases coming out in digital format the same day they’re released in stores. When these stories have come and gone and we’ve either moved on to the next thing or reverted back to the last thing, the fact that comics are coming digitally on the same day as their print counterparts will continue to be the one thing that will mark this step as revolutionary. There’s no going back once DC goes day-and-date-digital – once people get used to buying their comics on their iPad or laptop, they’re not willingly going to give that up. I suspect if any attempt were made to re-bottle that genie, readers would more likely stop reading altogether than go back to the comics shop.

It’s not surprising DC would be the first to go this route; they’re in second place, and more in need of trying something new. But once it’s done, Marvel’s going to be forced to follow suit sometime in the next year or risk falling behind.

They say these characters will be more diverse now. Do they mean it?

I don’t know yet, but I hope so. They’ve changed some of the characters who had been replaced with minorities (such as the Atom and Firestorm) back to the old white versions, and to no real storytelling advantage other than the names were what they’d been in the seventies).

We do know now that Cyborg is part of the new Big Seven Justice League, and I think that’s a fantastic idea. He’s a complex, powerful character who’s now been around for thirty years and certainly deserves to be considered upper-echelon at DC. Hell, he’s even been in costume more on Smallville than Superman ever was.

DC has implied that there will be some more racial switchups with some of these characters, and I think that’s a good thing. For most of them, there’s nothing that says they have to be white, or even the gender that they’re currently assigned. Why couldn’t the Flash, just for example, be black? Would that fundamentally change anything about his being the Fastest Man Alive? John Stewart is as every bit a Green Lantern as Hal Jordan. Why can’t the Atom be Chinese-American? Or Hawkman be truly Egyptian rather than just Egyptian-flavored?

I’d imagine we’re finally going to get to see Batwoman #1, and hopefully there will be other gay and lesbian characters featured a little more prominently. We’ll see.

More to come, I’m sure.