By the way, it seems that DC wants to bring us back to the 90's with foil covers!
https://www.bleedingcool.com/2018/07...-foil-october/

They've been doing foil covers for a while now, but mostly, they have been comic convention exclusives.

I never had a real problem with gimmicks like foil covers, even back in the 1990s. The problem became when DC and Marvel started having a different gimmick each month on titles that didn't deserve it.

Well, if you look at the list of books, there are many of those who don't deserve the special gimmick treatment all at.

File this under changes no one asked for: The new Red Hood costume

Hey, Jason Todd was killed with a crowbar. I know, lets make it part of his arsenal. Subtle.

Wasn't he killed by the bomb that exploded? He was just beaten badly with a crowbar, IIRC.

Ah, you may be right, I just remember him all bloodied up.

I don't like it much but it's all about providing a more workable "comic book" costume in live-action adaptations. That is what is driving all these mindless costume changes. Supergirl seems to receive a new costume now about every other issue. Some artist is sniffing royalties.

I feel all the goodwill that was earned in the past 2 years thanks to the Rebirth was lost today in Heroes in Crisis #1

Big spoilers below

There was still a contingent of fans that wanted Hal back. And Johns not only brought Hal back, he pretty much redeemed him from the crappy way they took him out. That made sense, and Johns did a great job of making sure Kyle and co. weren't lost in the shuffle, if anything he expanded the Corps. You don't get Baz or Cruz without what Johns did.

I don't know anyone that wanted Barry back besides Johns, but at that point Johns was like gold on books he was writing about legacy heroes. And who knows what would have happened had Flashpoint not been forced into the birth of the new 52, certainly it derailed whatever he and Manapul were doing on the Flash book at the time. It's not like Johns didn't write a great Wally earlier, either.

I still don't understand the point of making a Wally West of a different race.

I don't get that either. I want diversity in comic books, but don't use established characters with a long history and change their race or sexuality. Is disrespectful to everyone.

I prefer Wally to Barry and Hal to Kyle. It's not an either/or proposition.

It is when the powers that be basically want the focus to be on one Flash and not the other. Unlike the GLC, Wally was basically sidelined with his kids when Barry came back (and I still don't understand how/why Iris was deaged).

I've always loved both Barry and Wally. It killed me when Barry was missing for nearly 2 decades, and it upsets me how they've treated Wally over the past decade. What seems to be the problem is that DC doesn't believe there can be two separate Flash books on the market at once. That would solve all the problems if the Flash sold like a Batman property.

Barry is Flash going forward. Wally should have come back with a new superhero identity and made leader of the Titans or something.

There is an out. There are still whispers that DC plans to have another linewide reset in a couple of years, possibly after Doomsday Clock ends. It's believed we will be getting back a lot of missing characters back in the DC universe.

Now that DC's shared movieverse has failed, we don't have to worry as much about continuity from them leaking into the comics.

TV shows have leaked into the current comic book continuity. Supergirl Rebirth was straight out of the CW show. Tho now they're pushing her in another direction (probably dictated by DiDio and Lee). Almost to the same level she was in the New52. I don't know why they've gone out of their way to make Supergirl and angry young woman.

It's as bad as when they made Mary Marvel dress in all leather.

No idea what the current Supergirl direction is, but even when Kara was reintroduced she had some kind of evil in her and a mission to kill Superman. Though that run was a huge mess, they basically objectified her despite her supposedly being a teenager, then dropped all of it when creative changed. Then they totally changed her for new 52, then they reverted her to her TV status quo, and now who knows?

We do not talk about Countdown to Final Crisis. Ever. It doesn't exist. I didn't waste hundreds of dollars reading an issue a week on that garbage.

It's almost as if Didio and Lee were silently seething with rage that Johns pushed for a more hopeful, more optimistic DCU, and it was very positively received.

I haven't read DC comics in years, despite them being my favorite comics universe. It seems like they're making the same mistakes over and over again.

Heroes In Crisis #1 is out...

Didio's will be done

If those rumors are true, they really, really don't like legacy characters (besides maybe Damian, and they even killed him off at one point). I don't understand why they're so bipolar about things like this, but at least I can safely avoid them until the next reboot (or until they finally do LoSH again, because like I said before, I'm weak).

Not only that, but Green Lantern with Kyle Rayner wasn't selling that great anymore. Which is why they wanted something big to get the book selling again. What better way than to bring back Hal?

I thought the it was almost silly how Johns engaged in fanwank-writing to explain and retcon even something small like Hal Jordan having gray in his temples.
In hindsight though it was pretty cool, using fear to explain it all, and what we got out of that was mostly awesome, especially GLC and the Sinestro Corps.


Johns breathed some life into The Flash when he was writing Wally West the first time right? I heard that he brought back the original Flash Rogues and made them a serious threat again.
But then the book started selling poorly again, they brought back Mark Waid to work some magic, and he didn't, so they probably figured, Rebirthing Barry would do the same to sales that GL: Rebirth did.
It all comes down to sales.

I started reading because of Waid's Flash though. Flash #0 was what made me a fan.

Yeah, at the time Wally West Flash was going into an... interesting direction. He had twins, they raised them on an alien world that caused them to age rapidly, Impulse became Flash, they slaughtered Impulse, twins got deaged, blahblahblah (did I mention that comics were a mistake?). Then Barry came back, they somehow made Iris young again after portraying her as much older for many many years, and Barry basically became the focus with Wally off to raise his kids.

But Wally had been the textbook example of a legacy character taking up the mantle of his mentor and becoming his own man. The book on Barry was closed, and there was little reason to open it other than Johns being able to work some GL magic on that book. It's not like Barry became a mass murderer like Hal did, he died saving the universe. To hammer it home, Johns' Barry was very little like his old, boring self. I think a lot of people forgot that the Flash title was actually cancelled due to low sales before COIE.

Ah well, it'll all revert anyway.

I think we'd have Wally back if his most ardent fans would give up his kids. Didio apparently hates aging superheroes, and the former Kid Flash having children really changes Barry's age. If Barry is old, it's hard for them to write single Barry dating Iris. I think it's why Batman's wedding went the way it did.

I think if they could get away with it, Superman's marriage would be over and his kid permanently written off. But Superman's current fans badly want the marriage around and it would cost DC a big chunk of customers. I was scared they'd abandon it after Action Comics #1000. Instead, they shipped Lois off.