DC's REBIRTH Is 'Back To Basics' & 'Almost A Reset'

Newsarama: Dan and Jim, with Rebirth being such a status quo-changing event, are you seeing this as something the “New 52” needs to move on? One of the tag lines was that "something's missing" from the “New 52.” Was that the way the “New 52” felt, and what brought about Rebirth?

Jim Lee: I think as exciting as the “New 52” was, it didn't address certain elements that were very unique and identifiably DC. And I think over the years, as we moved the “New 52” forward, we realized we were missing an opportunity by overlooking things like legacy and generations and the things that were hallmarks of the DC Universe.

So what that allows us to do is talk again about, was there a Justice Society?

Talk again about a multi-generation of heroes and sidekicks.

And in a way, this was all there before Flashpoint, before the “New 52.”

Geoff came up with this brilliant story that basically allows us to seat the “New 52” within the continuity that preceded it.

So it really synchronizes and harmonizes pre-52 with “New 52” continuity, I think in an elegant way that allows, I think, long-time fans to have their cake and eat it too, and all the new fans that we got through the “New 52” to keep up with the fact that the universe is continuing to grow and evolve and is exciting and new.
DiDio: You know, as an overarching plan, it really was about trying to find ways to align all the storytelling, to bring it all in to some sort of harmony.

It felt like we had these cold starts and stops in the DC Universe, but it's all one, continuous universe moving forward.

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>It felt like we had these cold starts and stops in the DC Universe, but it's all one, continuous universe moving forward.
H Y P E

Nrama: Yeah, speaking of starts and stops, let's talk about Convergence, which had a surprise ending where the Crisis on Infinite Earths was basically erased from current history. That eliminated one of the best-known "start and stop" moments from DC history. How important was that to kind of open the doors for Rebirth? Were you not only trying out this idea of eliminating the "starts and stops," but also dipping your toe into the potential for the post-Crisis characters and concepts in today's market?

Dan DiDio: Yeah, on a character-by-character basis, what Rebirth is really doing is getting them back to the core concepts of what makes those characters great. We did some exploration of that with Convergence. We did looks back into periods of time that people remember very fondly.

But here, what we're doing is really extracting what we think are the great characteristics, or the essence of these characters that makes them great, and in doing so, really finding a way to connect with as many fans as possible of DC.

Nrama: One of the biggest changes coming with Rebirth is that you have several of your key books shipping twice a month. Can you explain where that idea came from? Is that because of the success you've had with the weeklies?

DiDio: Yeah, there are a couple of things at work here. We've had incredible success with the weekly series, since the original series 52. And what I like to say very proudly is that we've never shipped a weekly book late — ever — for the number of series we've done over all these years.

And what we wanted to do is focus on our core characters, the ones that sell better, and really get people re-invested in them, and deliver these stories in a slightly quicker manner, twice monthly, so that we can be more engaging.

Worst part of this is it confirms Geoff is too busy to write comics anymore.

>Geoff came up with this brilliant story that basically allows us to seat the “New 52” within the continuity that preceded it.
This is the most interesting part to me.

Movies were a mistake.

I mean, at the end of the day, we look at things like a Batman series of something like Gotham by Midnight. And I loved Gotham by Midnight, but it never got the sampling that a Batman book would. But if we did that Gotham by Midnight story and integrated it into the Batman series that was shipping twice monthly, there was a better chance for people to see those characters, get excited by those characters, and more importantly, if we ever decided to thin them out, maybe we'd have a stronger audience and a better chance for series like that to succeed.

But going back to the scheduling part of it, as I said, we've never shipped a weekly book late, and what we're doing now is we've got communities working on books — one or two writers, two to three artists, working on a twice-monthly shipping series. And by doing that, they all take ownership of the series. So if somebody's not able to maintain the schedule, someone else can step in and help them move it further.

And editorial's working further in advance than they've ever done before, in the plotting of these books. And our goal is to make sure that we don't ship any of these twice-shipping books late at all.

>bear with me, I'm on mobile.

When we launched the “New 52,” one of our greatest achievements is that every book shipped on time, with the exception of two books coming one week late. We want to make sure we achieve that same level of success with our schedule, because it's important for us, if we're making a commitment for a book to be on the shelf at a particular time, we need to have that book there. It's a commitment to our fans, if they're coming into a store, to find a book on a particular day. That book should be there.

Lee: Right.

I also think it's an interesting testing of the waters. We live in an era of binge-watching and immediate access to all the content you could want. And accelerating on series that people want to read and buy, I think it will be interesting to see how the audience and the retailers embrace it as we go forward.

Nrama: It's interesting to hear you put it that way, that you're waiting to see how they embrace it. Was there any discussion of whether you might be spreading your key brands a little too far, and causing some type of fatigue with readers? Did you take that into account?

DiDio: We're putting out, I believe, just as many or slightly less Batman product, with the double ships. What we did was eliminate some of the lower ranked titles, and we're trying to incorporate those ideas into the main books themselves, because we feel that makes the main books stronger, Fatigue only occurs if the stories aren't good.

We're hoping the quality of the material carries the day, moving all these series forward.

Lee: Right. There's like 17 twice-monthlies and 14 monthlies, so the actual title count is less than the “New 52.”

DiDio: Yep.

And one last thing also, Vaneta, is that we do have breaks in our schedule, where we'll decide whether or not a double-ship is working. And you might see some of these things slow down to monthly status at a later date. And we're going to be examining that on a regular basis. We're not going to keep book double-shipping if we don't think the demand is there.

Nrama: And possibly make a monthly into a twice-monthly book?

DiDio: There's no plans in that direction yet. We felt, when we looked at the titles, that we thought the ones we had in place seemed to be the strongest for the double-ships.

Lee: And you need a long, long runway to move from a monthly to a twice-monthly shipping schedule. Ironically, it actually makes the writers on twice-monthly books plan out much further in advance, because sometimes they might be starting an artist on the seventh issue while they're working on the first issue. So they need to have more visibility to where they're going, much further out than they typically would on a monthly. So it's tricky going the other way.

Nrama: Another approach you're taking is spreading out the #1 issues over the summer, as opposed to the sudden release of everything at once. I know that Marvel tends to relaunch and have events that signal change quite frequently, particularly over the last five years while you guys kind of ran with the “New 52” and then, to a smaller degree, with “DC You.” Now that you're having a status quo-altering event that goes over a few months, do you feel like the market needs that more often? Or do you think you're sticking with this another 52 issues?

Lee: I think there's a danger of diminishing returns when one goes back to the well too often. The plan is not to do that.

We want to create sustainable comics.

We realize we get an initial bump by doing first issues, but we have a long-term game plan, and everything we're doing is about retaining customers and creating demand, getting in the stores every week. And you only do that, ultimately, with great stories. That's the bottom line.

That's why we brought in Chief Creative Officer Geoff Johns to work with all the individual writers and editors on their books, really focusing on these characters, deconstructing them down to their core DNA and building out story arcs based on that DNA, which really focusing on why these characters are special and unique within the DC Universe.

And even the variant covers, we're only using specialty variants with comic book shops and variant covers in judicious ways. We're not going to have a gazillion SKUs across the entire line. We find that, at that point, why publish a story inside at all, if you're just going to build a business based on variant covers.

We're still using variant covers, but we're actually using one variant cover artist for each book. They sort of get tenure, as it were. And they're going to be responsible for being the alternate cover artist on that book. And we're only doing it on our top-selling books.

Nrama: That said, Dan, I look back at — I know a lot of people got really excited about Infinite Crisis and all the mini-series leading up to that, and the "One Year Later" event. There wasn't a ton of that in the “New 52,” although you had your September events and the break for Convergence. Do you think that'll still be part of your publishing plan, as you get past the new #1 issues and get all the "new" legacy characters incorporated?

DiDio: What we'll do is look at things very much on a character-by-character, book-by-book basis first. Part of what we're doing is that we're trying to re-establish the status quo.

You mentioned before about companies doing these continuity-altering and time-altering, earth-altering, character-altering events back-to-back. The problem is that, as you keep on changing things so often, you get further and further removed from the core of what makes the character great.

This is almost like a reset. We're getting back to the basics of the character again.

It's not a reinvention. It's not a reboot. It's just going back to what the core strengths of what the characters are, reinforcing them, understanding clearly what the characters stand for, what their motivations are about, who they are.

And that way, when we start to cross them over and start to do events, you can really understand why they're participating in this story, what their role is in the story, and then hopefully how they add to the overall make-up of the entire universe.

So we've got to get these characters back to where people recognize them, are comfortable with them, and are excited by them. And then from there, we can start to move the story forward and then start to cross them out and grow the universe as a really interactive world.

Nrama: You mentioned Geoff Johns' role in this, and I've talked to a few writers who have described the process of sitting down with Geoff for some time and discussing the stories they were writing. But is Geoff not writing anything himself for Rebirth after the DC Universe: Rebirth one-shot?

DiDio: I think… you know what? As of right now, Geoff isn't writing anything. He's got a lot of other demands that have been put on him. But as you said, the good thing is that he's been directly working with the writers and working with the editorial team, and really helped spread the sensibilities we were looking for throughout the line.

Nrama: Wow, that's probably the biggest change though, with Rebirth. DC doesn't have a Geoff Johns book. I just realized it.
DiDio: Oh we realized it beforehand!

Nrama: But they're all sort of infused with Geoff Johns I guess.

Lee: Yeah he meets with the editors once a week, and we brought in writers that he sat down with for, you know, four to six hours over days, with editors and writers. And he has experience working in writers rooms, and that's very much the approach he takes with it.

So his influence is felt across the entire line. And that is a trade-off. But at the same time, I think we have some awesome stories that speak to what makes these characters so unique and exciting.

Nrama: Are we still going to have a varied multiverse going forward?

Didio: We haven't really dug into the multiverse, to be honest with you. We're really still focused on the prime DC universe, the prime world. We want to make sure we get this right.

We're still continuing our Earth 2 series, but as for an exploration of the multiverse of itself, Rebirth is really focused on our core characters, our core world.

Nrama: We've heard some hints about characters coming up, such as Captain Marvel and, as you mentioned earlier, the Justice Society. I'm surprised some of these aren't announced yet. Will we see some of these things in Geoff's Rebirth issue next week? And will we get a feel for what might be coming down the line? Or are you going to be announcing things as we go?
DiDio: What's great about Geoff's book — it's 71 pages — is that there are a lot of surprises, and there are things that are going to excite people and get them pumped up for what the future of the DC Universe might be.

But what's great about the DC Universe is that we have so many characters. And I'm going to say the same thing I said at the start of the “New 52” — you don't want to use every character right away, you don't want to put every character on the table at the start. Because you run out of places to go.

We've slowed down the roll-out of the #1's, with them occurring over a period of months. And we also want to play out how characters come back, so we make sure that everybody comes back with the same level of importance we think they deserve.

Nrama: Any characters you want to tease that are coming up?

DiDio: You'll have to talk to Jim. I'm not allowed to tease anything anymore.

Lee: No, you know, I have to acknowledge and respect Geoff Johns' wishes. His book has so many amazing reveals and twists. I think readers will want that experience that Geoff had, where you bought the comic book and didn't know what was inside until you got home and sat down and read it. And next week, I guarantee you, people are going to be blown away by this story, by all the things he sets up, and the things he teases and puts into motion.

>Cereal king doesn't have any book post Rebirth
Wow. Fuck DCEU.

>We're really still focused on the prime DC universe, the prime world.

It's Prime Time!

Sorry Im lost how the fuck will they integrate characters like Flash family into the current continuity? Will the Flash kids come from the future?

There are tons of characters that cant be introduced yet because timeline, there are a shit ton of other characters that were retconned into different ones.

This sounds stupid.

Based SBP punching everything he wants to fix.
Do you even Speed Force?

Read any Rebirth nigga. Johns doesn't need a reboot to change character back story or retcon his way through bull shit to give us what we want or don't want.

For a second I thought Dan was calling him Captain Marvel again and got excited.

>one variant cover artist for each book
WW Cho time!

So this pretty much confirms it.
twitter.com/thesteveorlando/status/733291550655021056
GET HYPED.

That's a good thing you pleb

Has Geoff transcended mortality and become a god?

>Return to the cores of the characters
>P&C still pn Harley

Tell me lies, sweet little lies DiDio

...

Literally hang yourself shitbird.

>Mfw this movie fad will never end.

>Hawks holding hands during flight
Loving it.
I wouldn't mind movie fad if we had couple of Johns' clones writing comics. Sadly, it's not to be.

>forcing New 52 and pre-New 52 together
This is going to be so fucking confusing. I mean we were still figuring out how the New 52 fit together.

Comsidering Harley has never sold better P&C Harley is core Harley

You first, pleb

>I mean, at the end of the day, we look at things like a Batman series of something like Gotham by Midnight. And I loved Gotham by Midnight, but it never got the sampling that a Batman book would. But if we did that Gotham by Midnight story and integrated it into the Batman series that was shipping twice monthly, there was a better chance for people to see those characters, get excited by those characters, and more importantly, if we ever decided to thin them out, maybe we'd have a stronger audience and a better chance for series like that to succeed.


Ehhh... Okay. As much as I like smaller niche titles, a break to allow them to gain a larger audience is fine.

>Did you guys fuck up?
>No, noooooo we're just trying to get back the thousands of readers we drove away.

But P&C Harley isn't the Dini & Timm Harley is, they created the character. Saying that P&C Harley is the core is like saying Tara Harley is Harley's original voice actress

isn't the core*

Which would be fine if Geoff didn't have the control he does. If he can't follow through on stories he needs to back the fuck away and let other people follow through. Aquaman has been sitting on seven seas for what, three years?

I'm european, I'm not going to subscribe to any on-goings. I hope trades will be out faster though, I'm really looking forward to the first tpb of King's Batman.

For the greater good, Geoff must leave the dumpster fire that is DC Comics to save DC Films and thereby extend the life of DC Comics.

Do Diamond/DC/Whoever even count sales outside USA?

Except Justice League, with Johns, Or y'know Forever evil, with Johns, or....y'know I could keep going but honestly its like listening to communist radio. "NuDC was great. All DC readers is loving it. But we thought what if we make greatest greater. Wouldn't that rock co/mrades?"

Close to three years, yeah. I really wish to know what was spanner in the works. Earth 2 going to shithole and never getting crossover like they were supposed to changed plenty of plans?

>I think as exciting as the “New 52” was, it didn't address certain elements that were very unique and identifiably DC.

Or, we rushed the fuck out of the reboot and poorly managed the whole thing after.

Still amazes me how DC wasted the golden opportunity that was the New 52.

With Jim Lee doing suicide squad artwork, not likely.

>But if we did that Gotham by Midnight story and integrated it into the Batman series that was shipping twice monthly, there was a better chance for people to see those characters, get excited by those characters, and more importantly, if we ever decided to thin them out, maybe we'd have a stronger audience and a better chance for series like that to succeed.

Honestly that's a strategy I've been thinking would work for a while now, and am kind of hoping for from Rebirth. Rebirth looks like it loses a lot of the variety of the DCYou thing at first, but I'm hoping they can integrate the more unique things into the better selling books to drum up interest.

>Thousands of readers that we drove away.
Marvel shills everyone

>Nrama: Wow, that's probably the biggest change though, with Rebirth. DC doesn't have a Geoff Johns book. I just realized it.
>DiDio: Oh we realized it beforehand!

>Nrama: But they're all sort of infused with Geoff Johns I guess.

>Lee: Yeah he meets with the editors once a week

ARE YOU SERIOUS

WHAT IS BOB HARRAS'S JOB

HE'S THE GODDAMN EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, *******HE******* SHOULD BE MEETING WITH ALL THE EDITORS ONCE A WEEK, GODDAMNIT

Infinite Crisis 2.0

Please let it be Prime Time again

Harras has been dead for four months. DC hasn't said anything about it.

Harras' job is keeping writers likeWaid away from the company

You what?

From what I've garnered, Bob Harras has very little creative influence as Executive Editor. His role seems to be entirely managerial and about keeping the trains running on time rather than being a creative nexus for the company like DiDio was. Seriously, EICs are known for storylines that they championed or masterminded. When was the last story kernel that you could actually trace back to Harass.

I think it was that dreadful Reign of Doomsday storyline like 5 years ago. I can't think of ANYTHING else that he's responsible for.

Do you really want him to though? Just have him do boring stuff like talking to accountants

I actually don't know. I have no idea if they make money outside of NA.

Harras died under mysterious circumstances. To avoid more bad press than they've already had, they haven't announced Harras' death, but they did hire a successor, though obviously that hasn't been revealed yet either. I believe Johns and Morrison were in the running, but given the former's role as CCO and DC Films co-runner and the latter's role as EIC for A.D. 2000, they're obviously not going to be there.

This pisses me off. The comics are where these concepts come from. Rather than view them as tertiary, Johns should be required to write two series a year, if not, then Warners should have him somewhere else and Dan and Jim should be able to hire a big name writer to move there books. But you don't make DC comics pay Geoff and then not have him work on comics.

Well then.

Might be bullshit, but any other juicy tidbits you can share with us?

He does if he wants me to give a fuck. I don't want any Flash family, I want muh flash family. No bullshit, no blackface. I want my favs back. Or I'll keep going elsewhere for my comics.

This feels me with such dark glee. I hope Rucka fucking keels over when he sees the variants Frank's drawing, fucking SJW asshole.

Not without revealing any more about myself and my role. Sorry.

DC would, but I don't if Diamond is the overseas distributor.

Please, for the love of god, let this be true. Literally anybody else would be better/more interesting as EIC.

DC will sure miss you and your characterfaggotry user.

Bitch, fuck you, I'm OG DC. I still have my Moench Batman run floppies. My favorite comic of all time is whatever happened to TJAW. Lois/Clark are my OTP. You don't know what the fuck you talking. Nufag

>without
How the fuck is Rucka SJW? Stop this meme.

Sharp already said Cho's variants aren't going to be lewd. I don't think Rucka is against WW looking sexy judging by the artists he has worked with.

>For a second I thought Dan was calling him Captain Marvel again and got excited.
He was called Captain Marvel in the most recent issue of recent Scooby Doo team-up.

Maybe, but right of the bat I hated E2. I've never liked Robinson and he and Levitz ruined the concept too much for mer to buy in. I feel like Geoff meant to do another Aqua crossover with the League but didn't follow through. Same with Superman.

>No, noooooo we're just trying to get back the thousands of readers we drove away.

What is the point of this? They said almost exactly that in the interview admitting that steps they took in the New 52 alienated older fans.

So are they debooting the Teen Titans or what?

I know they're retconning the NTT back into continuity, but are they doing anything to fix what Loeb did?

He's right though, they didn't drive away that many. Sales are basically the same as they were before since the new 52 bump ended.

That's Didio. Waid and Didio hate each other since Countdown. Waid is salty because Didio said Countdown was 52 done right. When Didio tried to shoe horn continuity into Flash 2.0 Waid quit the project and left the artists and other staff on flash who he was responsible for out in the cold.

I know that JL and E2 should crossover but Robinson left the building and we got that Amazo virus or whatever arc.
And yeah, I understand why you couldn't like E2.

Most of the new 52 Teen Titans seem to be benched (though Rucka mentioned he might use Cassie so it's not an official edict). I've only seen Tim in Tec so far.

also
>mfw the new editor-in-chief is Shelly Bond

Anything about Park[/spoiler] & Cinema you visit?

ruckawriter.tumblr.com/post/83527917580/contents-under-pressure

He is, has always been, and anyone who defends him can fuck off. He's a Whedon tier shit.

Rucka is mercurial as fuck. He would throw Cho under the bus, then after it ran over him piss on him and tell him how he deserved it. (He would also pay a woman to kick him and jerk off like the cuckold bitch he is.)

The apparently are bitch, otherwise they wouldn't be trying to trick people like me back.

If he would throw Cho under the bus why did he not do it already? You're acting triggered as fuck right now.

No, there not. Babsgirl is selling what Steph Batgirl did. Batman is selling good, with a top tier artist and big name writer, but the same would have happened before. Wonder Woman sales actually rose under Azz and Chiang. And once you remove Romita and Johns from the Superman title, that book tanked massively. Sales have gone down, the Nu52 crowd is slightly smaller than the ones they replaced, and the goal wasn't to sell less books to a different group of people. The idea was to retain the fans and build. The opposite happened.

And it sucked because I was so excited for Helena Wayne and Jay Garrick. But damn if both books didn't just miss the mark. Had some amazing artists though...

I was more excited for nuTrinity.
And we all know how GL, Hawkgirl and Flash got shafted in favor of Superblack and Batmen.

Sales are the same as they were pre-Flashpoint. There was a bump at the beginning of the new 52 that has died now. Nothing in your post disproves what I said. Superbooks pre-Flashpoint were in the 25-35ks and they're in the 25-35ks now. WW was 20-30k then and it's 20-30k now. The only title that has seen a big drop from being a top seller is GL but Harley Quinn essentially makes up for it.

Stop using tumblr works comblr. And stop pretending you aren't an SJW for defending such a PC princess.

agreed, Tom Taylor definitely couldn't wait to make Superman a black pacifist. Pathetic really.

Marvelfag here.I haven't read DC since Flashpoint (well, a little bit after FP I stopped because it was garbage). I have to tell you, this is the first interview about a 'reset/reboot'relaunch'renumbering/whatever' that has actually piqued my interest. I know it's usually just PR speak, but this legitimately sounds interesting to me and may make me pick up some DC books for the first time in so long.

>Cucka on Wonder Woman again

Boooooriiing.

Maybe it's because you're a Marvel reader that you didn't see the clear signs that this was going to be a Zero Hour/Infinite Crisis style relaunch as soon as the first interview. There's nothing new here. DC does these continuity cleanups regularly.

it was consistently higher than twenty under Azz, and prior to the NuWonder title, the WW books had already rebooted under JMS. Unless your comparing the last twelve months of Superbooks where DC took all there talent and put them on the reboot.

No, I understood that part, what's interesting me in this one is that it actually sounds like they have an idea of what is wrong and a plans to fix it that aren't just 'MORE #1s! NEW MINORITY CHARACTER! CROSsSSOVVVEERRR' which I get enough of with Marvel.

Would you rather have Bennett user?

It was higher under Azz because it was launched with the new 52. And I actually went to 2010 for those Superbook sales in the middle of New Krypton, it did not go higher after that ended. Superbooks haven't really been that good overall for a while now so there's no real talent excuses that can be made.

It is pure fact that pre-Flashpoint sales are the same as pre-Rebirth sales. We will likely see another bump for a while with Rebirth before they drop back to that "normal" DC level. That doesn't mean DC has lost readers in the long run.

As much as these PR releases can tell you, all you need to look at are the books themselves.

We're getting tighter talent on more known characters, and each book seems to have it's identity mostly figured out. There are some pretty strong creative teams here, which is all one needs to see.

What kind of books do you like, user?

Azz run ended three years after the relaunch so no.

It is not a fact, go to any site, sells overall have fallen or are slightly less than what they were. They have lost readers, surveys have shown that they've lost a percent of their readership while gaining some new one, some of those also dropping off.

There was a drop-off last winter but it affected all comics, Marvel too.

The general sales bump for the new 52 ended around 2013 or so though. And Azz's run was at 30k by the end of it.

I'm getting this information from Comichron right now. I'm not sure where you're seeing that DC's sales have fallen. In fact they sold about 25,092,000 units in 2010 and 26,803,000 in 2015 if you extrapolate the market numbers and percentages. That's basically no change.

Neither.

Well I should correct myself, Azz's run was in the 30ks generally not specifically at 30k. 30-40k range.

Good ones. Ha. Honestly, I'm a total capefag so it can really be anything. Notable favorites are X-Factor Vol. 3, Daredevil (almost all of his runs), anything by DnA, Punisher Max, Morrison's X-Men and most of his Batman (his meta wankery gets to me sometimes), Swamp Thing, 100 Bullets, Preacher, and lately Spencer & Lieber works and Manifest Destiny. Really, I could like anything as long as the writing is strong. I just haven't been paying attention to this Rebirth thing until this interview to know what's coming to look out for.

Blah-blah-blah.

Same goddamned bullshit both companies say after any big shake-up event.

Why do people keep swallowing this shit? They're lying through their fucking teeth! WAKE UP, GODDAMN IT!