So WOW DC is really going big with their post-Flashpoint plans!! Every book is getting relaunched with a new #1, and every character appears to be getting revamped. USA Today reports that Dan Didio said:
This was a chance to start, not at the beginning, but at a point where our characters are younger and the stories are being told for today’s audience.
And if the first image from the only announced book so far, Geoff Johns and Jim Lee’s Justice League (Cyborg? Really? I’m all for diversity, but Cyborg bores the hell out of me), is any indication, everybody’s looking much younger. Superman especially… he almost looks like a kid.
Apparently Jim Lee has redesigned all the costumes, with is slightly troubling. Jim Lee is a spectacular artist, but designing things is not his strong suit (see: the recent Wonder Woman costume). Superman doesn’t have any briefs and a weird collar, which I don’t much care for. Some things you don’t need to screw with. But everyone else looks normalish.
Let’s take a little more time with Wonder Woman, and single her out for a closer look:
Some thoughts:
- It looks a lot like the latest redesign… we might have a pantsed Wonder Woman for a while.
- No more gold!! Apart from the lasso anyway… the tiara, chest piece, and belt are all silver now. The bracelets remain silver, as always.
- I really like how Jim Lee always draws Wonder Woman’s bracelets to look like the manacles they are based on (in the old Marston origin from the 1940s, the Amazons wore the bracelets as a reminder of their capture by Hercules so that they’d never let a man subjugate them again).
- The tiara looks a lot like the current tiara, which I really don’t like.
- The choker and arm bracelet just look silly.
- Amusingly, the one big change to the costume is the removal of the straps, which many people thought was one of the few sensible parts of the outfit.
- I don’t mind the silver eagle on the chest. I don’t love it, but I don’t mind it.
- I don’t miss the belt really.
- She certainly looks better than Superman… the Superman costume doesn’t need to get screwed with!!
We’ve got no story details yet, so all I can talk about is the costume… and it doesn’t seem to hold any exciting revelations for us. We should find out the creative team for Wonder Woman in the next couple weeks, and perhaps a bit of information on what’s up with her from the solicit. Bleeding Cool is saying that there might be a Superman/Wonder Woman romance in the works (which SPOILER ALERT suggests that Clark Kent and Lois Lane will no longer be married), but that’s all we’ve got on Wonder Woman thus far.
The other big news is that DC is moving to day and date digital release for ALL their comics, which is great… digital is, of course, the wave of the future, and it’s smart for DC to get onboard. I’m impressed that they are embracing it so fully, and that gives me hope that the people running the company have some brains (I worry sometimes).
So yeah, big changes are coming!! I am both nervous and excited… DC definitely needs a shake-up, but huge changes can be VERY tricky. To be super honest, there’s no current team I’d be really upset to not have return to their book… I like Snyder and Jock on Detective Comics a lot, and Geoff Johns on Green Lantern (apparently he’s staying), but for pretty much every other book I’d be open to seeing someone new. I really hope it goes well… I love DC, and it would be nice to have the whole line revitalized.
Tags: Dan DiDio, Flashpoint, Geoff Johns, Jim Lee, Justice League, Relaunch, Wonder Woman
