#just let us build our sandcastles in peace dan ffs

[themyskira]

Based on that WW #750 (which sounds like I need to buy mostly for the good parts), I take it you don't like 5G's idea of having Diana be the DCU's first superhero. At least, I think you do? How do you feel about that and the whole 5G thing as a whole? Just curious.

I have less than zero interest in 5G because I haven’t read a single thing about it that suggests it’s any different than the New 52, or Rebirth, or any other Capital-C-Crisis over the past fifteen years.

Dan Didio and his cohort of graduated comics fanbros have this utterly boring preoccupation with creating a Grand Unified History of the DC Universe that takes all the messy, sprawling, sometimes contradictory stories and characters across the last eighty-odd years of comics and organises them all in neat little lines and boxes.

It’s an obsession they’ve argued is about accessibility for new readers -- and both n52 and Rebirth did offer a superficial degree of accessibility by creating clear jumping-on points with fresh story arcs in new #1 issues -- but in practice it looks a lot like Dan and his bros reconfiguring the universe around what they think matters (while erasing or simply ignoring anything they think doesn’t).

It’s the reason the New 52 retained all four male Robins and their key character arcs while erasing two Batgirls and infantilising the remaining one.  At the end of the day, Dan Didio, Jim Lee and their pals made the decision that every male member of the core Batfamily (along with their somewhat complex histories of adoptions and assassin babies, deaths and resurrections, and growth into their own iconic vigilante identities) was Important -- and that the three Batgirls and their comparable growth arcs were not.

The past couple of reboots have been riddled with these kind of value judgements, privileging what Dan and the boys see as worthwhile (or what they see as appealing to their narrow target audience of white, heterosexual, cisgender 18-35 year-old men) while sneering at everyone else. They’ve also been plagued by poor planning, poor communication and poor follow-through: in both the New 52 and Rebirth, writers would regularly contradict or confuse the new canon simply because it wasn’t clear to anyone on the books what was and wasn’t in continuity.

So when I yet again hear the words “new timeline” and “Dan Didio” in the same sentence, I don’t care how awesome 5G is as a concept on paper, I don’t trust that it’s going to be implemented with any particular care or aptitude.

And, well. This is just a personal view, but I don’t find it a particularly interesting concept. I don’t read comics for overarching metaplots and crossover events. Nothing turns me off a book faster. I follow characters and I’m drawn to stories that build on a hero’s personal arc, their relationships, their world. It doesn’t particularly worry me exactly how an individual book or arc slots in with the broader timeline of the universe. Shared comic book universes have always been tangled, convoluted places and I’m cool with a bit of handwaving; like a lot of comics fans, I’m long accustomed to flat-out ignoring the bits of canon I don’t like (it’s so sad that Barbara Gordon hasn't appeared in a single DC comic since 2011, don’t you think?).

I much prefer a big wide sandbox, with all its oddities and contradictions and forgotten treasures for writers to draw upon to build interesting stories, over a prescriptive crossover event that derails stories and character arcs in favour of a meta story I’m never going to read anyway.

As for making Wondy the first superhero, I’m... ambivalent. The idea of Diana being an early source of hope who saw the potential in all humanity and inspired others to stand up is lovely, but the more I reflect on it the less comfortable I am with re-anchoring her origins in WWII-era America and the patriotic narratives that are likely to come with it.

It’s of course possible that a writer might use this opportunity to thoughtfully interrogate how the Wonder Woman we know would navigate and push back against the violent bigotry of 1940s America -- but we’re more likely to see a retread of the original propagandistic Golden Age narrative of a heroine who helps the virtuous Americans topple the evil Axis powers, both because of a likely reluctance on DC’s part to get too ~political~ (you know, by acknowledging America’s racist history exists) and because the DCU’s history is intended to follow a similar path to our own world’s (which means Wonder Woman can’t be allowed to change society in any noticeable way aside from ~inspiring~ other heroes... and that immediately creates a rather depressing vision of the eighty years she’s spent in Man’s World).

And that’s the real problem: they’re moving her origin story back to the forties not because they have anything new to say or any particular story they want to explore with the character in that era (like, for instance, Superman Smashes the Klan is doing brilliantly at the moment), but because the five-generation scheme they’re going for requires that Diana (as a designated first-generation hero) appear in the forties. Because Dan and the bros have a Vision and their Grand Unified History of the DCU takes precedence over piffling things like good storytelling and rich characters.

oh and the other problem I have with 5G is the dumbass name because it just puts me in mind of those fucking Telstra ads.