DC Reboots (Again? Maybe?)

So, if you didn't hear, DC Comics - in-tandem with the current big Flash event "Flashpoint" - will soon be resetting EVERY major character's book back to "#1" with new continuities that will (supposedly) render them slightly younger, possibly with different races/genders in some cases as well, and with "streamlined" backstories that place their origins in contemporary contexts and do away with the decades of baggage. People are flipping out, I'm not, here's why...


Firstly, this is all kind of old at this point. Yeah, when the "Silver Age Fanboy Regime" (Morrison, Johns, etc) at DC first started in on a "take two" of The Crisis (re: Infinite Crisis/52) it was a lot of fun... but at this point, they've now pulled this "whoa! massive continuity shift!!!" thing SO many times in events and even individual books (see: JMS's Wonder Woman) it's lost all impact for me on a conceptual level.

Secondly, I'm not buying it (in either sense - I can't afford it right now) - the guys running DC right now are in looooooove with ultra-dense Silver Age-style storytelling, it would be NUTS for them to suddenly junk all the work they've done making the DCU more hardcore-fanboy-friendly for this. I've seen a few people theorizing (BAD's Devin Faraci, for one) that this is actually a "stunt" that'll wind up like a DCU version of Onslaught/Heroes Reborn (or "House of M") - i.e. the "rebooted" universe will only be around for a little while, then someone will "realize something is wrong" (possibly Flash, since "Flashpoint" involves ANOTHER alternate-DCU where he never existed apparently) and will escape-back-to/bring-back the "original" universe, leaving the rebooted universe to become a DC version of Marvel's "Ultimate Comics" line. This theory is bouyed by the fact that the whole thing is tied-in to a much more significant event: Releasing all of the "rebooted" lines day-and-date for tablet-viewing downloads - the REAL big gamble of attracting new readers.

Either way, it's the DCU: Don't like the coninuity? Wait a year...