DC Comics Relaunch: Fairwell to the old DCU

With last week’s release of Flashpoint we have seen the end of the old DC universe. I can’t really comment on the New DC Universe yet as the only book out is Justice League. So let’s look at how the DCU of old ended.
Remember that we only heard about this change back in June. At that time the DCU was chugging along and none of us knew the end was nigh. What I wonder about is how many creators had advanced knowledge.
Zantanna was a title that was still relatively new with issue #16 being the final issue. During its run there was the set-up of a new mystic villain Brother Night and a new love interest Dale Colton. At around issue 12 the series was I would say midway through the Brother Night arc. I assume the plan was to go on with this story for a while.
Then we get the relaunch. Rather than accelerate the arc, the writers ignored it, Brother Night and Dale. The last issues of Zatanna were all stand-alone stories. To be fair they were good stories, but they did nothing to resolve the hanging plot threads of the series.
Zatanna will still be in the new DCU. She is a member of Justice League Dark. Maybe these threads will be picked up there, but I personally doubt it.
Wonder Woman was different in that the story already was dealing with an altered timeline. In this case the final issue resolved the storyline restoring Wonder Woman to her proper self. In a nod to the coming change Wonder Woman herself said she felt another change was coming. At least in this case there were no major plot threads left hanging.
This leaves the final story of the old DCU, Flashpoint.
Here is a case where I wanted to like this story, but in the end it just left me a bit cold.
Had this been just a simple Flash story line I would have been fine with it. But it isn’t, it is the catalyst for the new DCU.
When DC did its first major reboot in 1985 with Crisis on Infinite Earths it was a story on a grand scale. It incorporated the majority of the characters in the universe, was played on a cosmic scale and took place over the course of a year. Basically DC earned the reboot.
With Flashpoint it was in the end a Flash story dealing with time travel. While it could be argued that it dealt with major characters of the DCU, they were in unrecognizable forms, with half the heroes being turned into villains.  None of the mini-series that went along with Flashpoint have any apparent impact on what is to come and were really nothing more than a sales ploy. Some of them were good stories, but they do not add to the relaunch in any way that I can see.
The whole thing leaves me with the feeling that this is reboot feels soft and that at any moment the powers that be at DC (Dido, Lee and Johns) can say “Ok, done with that, fix the timeline and return the DC Universe to normal.”
So in the end the DCU went out not with a bang, but a whimper.

DC Comics Relaunch Part 4

Ok, so for the last 3 posts I have gone on about why I think the relaunch is happening. Today I want to wrap this up by going the other direction and discuss what I think about what will be happening.
My biggest issue right now is the derailing of characters that have seen a lot of growth over that last few years. The relaunch appears to be sweeping a lot of it aside.
First, the one everyone is talking about: Batgirl. Since the 60’s Barbara Gordon was Batgirl. She was the plucky girl who wanted to be a crime fighter like Batman and Robin. She was often the third wheel of the Batman characters.
Then the Joker shot her.
And he didn’t even shoot her as Batgirl. He went after Barbara Gordon as part of a plan to destroy her father. The result was she was left paralyzed from the waist down.
This resulted in her going from a third wheel bat character to a major force in the DC universe.
Rather than wallow in self-pity, Barbara used her intellect, drive and cunning to re-forge herself as Oracle, information broker for the superhero community. She trained to be a bad-ass fighter even from a wheel chair and formed a team of heroes to work directly for her called the Birds of Prey. In the process she became a role model for people dealing with disability that the public embraced.
And now that’s over.
Come September Barbara will somehow be healed and become Batgirl again. DC has said that they are not rewriting her history. The old stories I have mentioned are still be her back story. But instead of being a strong woman rising above the adversity of being confined to a wheel chair coordinating heroic efforts across the globe, she will be leaping the rooftops of Gotham City fighting one crime at a time.
I note that no one has said anything about Stephanie Brown, the daughter of minor Batman villain the Clue Master that Barbara took under her wing and trained to be the new Batgirl.  I guess she will either be ignored, killed, or go back to her previous identity of the Spoiler.
Another point is that several other characters are getting completely rewritten, so that unlike Barbara, the previous backstory is just gone.
So if you had been following any of the Teen Titans almost all of them are getting completely new backstories. Wonder Girl, the mortal daughter of Zeus, taken under Wonder Woman’s wing and trained to be a hero. She has gone from Heroic leader of the Teen Titan’s to a thief being recruited by the team to help on a mission so they can keep an eye on her. 
Why this complete change? We have no idea.
Finally we have Zatanna, one of the premier magic heroes. She has been headlining her own book, which has been very well written and is in the middle of a story that from where I sit doesn’t seem like it will be wrapped up in a satisfying manner in a couple of months. Well that book is over in August and Zatanna will now be part of Justice League Dark, the new magic based team. Maybe her storyline will continue there, but I doubt it and she has to share the stage with the other magic heroes.
I notice I have focused on female characters. They are not the only ones this is happening to. Superboy, Kid Flash and Red Robin are getting complete overhauls as well. And theirs all all just as annoying as Wonder girls.
However I could be wrong. This does not have to be gloom and doom. Batgirl is being written by Gail Simone, one of DC’s best writers. If anyone can take this and turn it into a compelling story it is Gail. Too bad they had to cancel her excellent Secret Six to do it.