Batman Meets 'Watchmen': Is DC Comics' New Big Reboot Alienating New Readers?

Images via DC Comics

To understand why, you’ve got to understand DC’s previous big re-organising event, ‘The New 52’. The New 52 was actually the biggest thing DC had done since that original big crossover Crisis on Infinite Earths. Essentially, realising that their 70 years of continuity was scaring off new readers, they basically cancelled all their titles, and relaunched them not only from a new #1, but also a whole brand new universe. A true reboot. So now, they were saying to new readers, here’s a whole new Batman and Superman and Justice League for you to start at the beginning with.  

Thing is, it didn’t really work. Long time fans were pissed that all these years of stories they’d been following now ‘didn’t matter’. And while the stunt did increase sales, the new readers didn’t really materialise. Sure, the characters were rebooted, but the comics themselves didn’t look or feel any different. The house style was still stuck in the 90s, with snarling meathead antiheroes and scantily clad heroines with gravity-defying breasts, frighteningly dense storytelling and overly-busy page lay-outs. If you weren’t reading before, why should you start reading now? Marvel have had considerable success at attracting new audiences by allowing their B and C tier titles really deviate from the norm. Titles like Hawkeye, Squirrel Girl, Ms Marvel and Young Avengers don’t feel like your typical superhero comic, and have reached out past the core fanbase, to appeal to new Marvel converts. It’s not the status quo that’s the barrier, it’s whole aesthetic. The New 52 didn’t change that at all.

So DC: Rebirth starts with Wally West, aka The Flash’s sidekick Kid Flash, bursting into the Batcave via some sort metaphysical lightning blast. It’s crucial to note here that Wally West was a character who wasn’t in the New 52 continuity* — in this world he never existed. In his first person narration that runs throughout the issue, Wally prefaces his arrival by saying “Right now I’m worse than dead. I’m forgotten”. Wally’s return is revealed to basically mean that the old DC, the pre-New 52 DC, is coming back, to save the universe from this ‘wrong’ continuity that has taken over.

This is big. Because it is essentially DC saying “Look, the New 52 was a failure, we’re trying to forget about it and bring back the old stuff that you liked.” And DC Rebirth #1 is not a very friendly comic to new readers. If you want to get through it, you definitely can read and enjoy it with the help of Wikipedia and a general knowledge of pop culture. But relatively unfamous characters like Blue Beetle and Aqualad turn up with little introduction or hand-holding. When Rebirth was first announced, DC co-publisher Dan DiDio said: “We believe in the… core comics fan. Rebirth is designed to bring back the best of DC’s past, embrace the stories we currently love and move the entire epic universe into the future. We are returning to the essence of the DCU.”

That’s basically just saying “Fuck it, we don’t care about new fans. We don’t care about getting the next generation on board. We don’t want to try new things. We’re just going to keep appealing to the same old dudes who’ve been buying our stuff for years, who just want the same old thing, over and over again.” And that’s really depressing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure DC will put out some great comics, but if the overriding ethos of the editorial team is just to appeal to the same old aging fans, that’s really sad.

Yet there’s another big thing that happens in this issue, that actually might pull new readers in. At the end of the story, Batman finds a smiley face badge embedded in the wall of the Batcave. And then we get an epilogue that basically confirms that the characters of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s Watchman are going to be coming into the DC Universe proper. Which is a really really big deal. The rights and usage of Watchman have been a major source of contention between DC and Alan Moore for many years, especially following the Moore-less sequels and film adaptation. But even though Dr Manhattan, Rorsarch and the rest are all property of DC, they’ve never had the gaul to straight-up just have them meet up with Batman and Superman. Until Now. While reaction to the movie varied massively, in the last decade Watchman has gone from a cult book to a truly iconic piece of pop culture. While many will say that injecting them into the DC universe is sacrilege, there are also plenty of people for whom Watchmen is probably the only superhero comic they have ever read. Doing this now is a very ballsy move for DC, and it’s hard not to want to see where it goes next — even if it turns out to be a train wreck, it should be a fascinating one. 

*Ok, nerds, technically a new African American Wally West was introduced, but he was clearly a different character. And he appears to be sticking around, which gives at least some hope that diversity isn’t being expunged for the sake of fan service.