How To Fix DC Comics!

(A series wherein I propose the sweeping changes necessary to salvage these once-beloved characters)

Batman allies:

Dick Grayson - is Nightwing. Leader of the Titans. Married to Starfire (sorry, Babs!). Back in black-and-blue.

Jason Todd - is the Red Hood. Just like he is at the end of the DC Universe Animated Original Movie, Batman: Under the Red Hood. Countdown/Infinite Crisis no longer having happened means that Superboy-Prime played no part in his resurrection. He's not an anti-hero, he's a villain.

Tim Drake - is Robin. Leader of Young Justice. "Red" Robin? That's Dick Grayson in Kingdom Come.

Stephanie Brown - is back! But she's the Spoiler. She and Tim are still dating. And just because she was never Robin doesn't mean she can't still be friends with Cassandra Cain!

Damian Wayne - Sorry, who? Robin is Tim Drake. Ibn al Xu'ffasch grows up to be a villain in Kingdom Come. Additionally, this means that his mother - Talia al Ghul - never killed her own son.

Carrie Kelley - Robin from The Dark Knight Returns. Stop trying to be cute with her turning up in the current books! Having her as a teen in the modern day makes no sense. And, seeing as how this is as good a place to mention it as any: The Dark Knight Strikes Again? Never happened.

Barbara Gordon - is Oracle. Leader of the Birds of Prey. Just as it should be. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Cassandra Cain - is Batgirl. She is as she was before "One Year Later" - i.e., mute and non-villainous. Sort of makes Strix from New 52-flavor Birds of Prey largely redundant - but if we have to choose one over the other...

Kate Kane - J.H. Williams III and W. Haden Blackman are back - starting with what should have been their version of Batwoman #26. Anything they say and do is considered gospel from that point forward.

Jean-Paul Valley - is alive! Seriously, why did they kill this guy off? Was it just a knee-jerk overreaction to 'Nineties excess? The only thing I'm personally undecided on is whether he'd be better off as Azrael (original costume), or as Az-bats in a new incarnation of Batman, Inc. Probably the former.

Calvin Rose - If one good thing has come from the New 52, it's the work Scott Snyder (no relation!) has done on Batman (for the most part - still not a fan of the whole "Joker wearing a mask that's made out of his face" thing). So I whole-heartedly approve the integration of the Court of Owls into any hypothetical new continuity - Talon included.

How To Fix DC Comics!

(A series wherein I propose the sweeping changes necessary to salvage these once-beloved characters)

Jack "King" Kirby - Everything Kirby ever created for DC is back - exactly the way it was when he last wrote it (i.e., if the man himself killed off one of his characters, then they stay dead)*. The goofier, the better! He was a literal creative god who strode upon this earth, and one would have to be a fool to reject his gifts.

That said, the following exceptions do apply:

1. Whereas Neil Gaiman's Sandman would hereafter be considered in-continuity/canon, nothing from Kirby's title of the same name should be allowed to contradict it.

2. The Newsboy Legion could be updated ever-so-slightly to better reflect modern times (for example, gathering intel for internet-based media outlets rather than shilling papers out on the streets).

3. The world of Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth, and its titular character, is still Earth-51. However, where Countdown got things wrong was in erroneously assuming that there should have been - or ever needed to be - an explanation of the "Great Disaster"/the way things got to be that way in the first place.

I mean, if we all readily accept an Earth where things are (roughly) the opposite of how they are here, with little-to-no explanation given, can't we just accept Kamandi's world as-is?

*EDIT - Exception: Having literally just finished reading Cosmic Odyssey for the first time (12/1/13), I've decided that the events of this miniseries should still stand (the contributions to John Stewart's characterization, for example, are just too important for it not to count).

How To Fix DC Comics!

(A series wherein I propose the sweeping changes necessary to salvage these once-beloved characters)

J'onn J'onzz - The Martian Manhunter was once the heart and soul of the Justice League... and so he shall be again. I've never bought this paranoid, xenophobic (hypocritical much?) nutjob we've got now - what with his random fits of violent anger, and all...

So J'onn ought to be in the Justice League, while Cyborg is supposed to be in the Titans. Seems a simple enough solution, right? Why not just switch them out? Ah, but then you'd lose that diversity, you tell me. The answer there is easy, too.

What if Dr. Erdell - the man responsible for first bringing J'onn to Earth - had been African-American? And, in honoring that man after his death, the Manhunter takes on his appearance literally anytime he isn't in full-on superhero mode?

How To Fix DC Comics!

(A series wherein I propose the sweeping changes necessary to salvage these once-beloved characters)

First thing's first: The explanation ain't half as important as the results. I'm afraid another reboot's in order - with the following caveats:

1. Some stuff should directly follow continuity from before the New 52 (i.e., Teen Titans picking up after the events of The Titans vol. 1 #25).

2. Some stuff should integrate all the aspects of the character(s) that have worked best up until this point.

Beyond that, I'm just going to be throwing out suggestions to see what works. No particular order - and frequently brief, so as not to run out of material. For instance...

Top 3 Explanations For The (Aforementioned) Reboot:

1. No explanation given - nor is one necessary.

2. The New 52 was really just Earth-52 all the time!

- or (my personal favorite) -

3. The New 52 was a mass hallucination created by the Black Mercies!

How poor writing/decision-making rendered DC Comics' New 52 functionally irrelevant/"dead."

(An addendum to other recent posts)

Relic blew up Oa! That's certainly noteworthy... isn't it?

...except that it isn't. The Guardians themselves admitted (in Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn) that Oa itself ISN'T REALLY IMPORTANT.

In a near-death situation (Green Lantern vol.5 #4), Hal Jordan realized that his only regret was that he'd never see Carol Farris again. When he inevitably escaped and made it back to Earth, he immediately declared his undying love to her. He even tried, for her sake, to give up serving in the Corps!

So of COURSE the current creative teams on the Green Lantern books have her paired off with... Kyle Rayner?!

Still, I've got to give them credit for killing off John Stewart... until, that is, I remember that they once cured him of paraplegia to coincide with the advent of the Justice League animated series!

You know, it's sad but true - other than new releases based on the the pre- New 52 continuity (such as The Sandman: Overture), DC Comics ended sometime before Green Lantern: New Guardians #23.

Oh, and with Harley Quinn turning out to be a mass murderer... of children, no less!

And with the way DC editorial wrongfully screwed-over J.H. Williams III and W. Haden Blackman over Batwoman, too.

DC: Dumb Choices.

"YOU MANIACS - YOU BLEW IT UP!!!"

So the Regressives finally did it. They went and broke the whole dang government.

Leave it to rich old white men to ruin things for the rest of us.

DC's Lights Out storyline event practically writes itself!

"Just wanted to say, loving 'Relic' as the villain's name."

"Me too! I mean, after 'Parallax' I really thought we'd already used every word in the dictionary."

"It's got the irony that hipsters love - what with it meaning 'old and obsolete,' and all..."

"So we've already killed off the Blue Lantern Corps. Who's next?"

"The Indigo Tribe? Haven't used those guys in a while..."

"Brilliant! They're gone. And after that... the Star Sapphires, maybe?"

"We're still getting rid of all the 'good' corps, right? ...except the Green Lanterns, of course!"

"Yeah, because anybody good must also be weak. But wait - didn't we just use Carol Farris in Man of Steel?"

"Ah, shoot! Well, we could kill off Fatality instead..."

*chuckles* "FINISH HER!!!"

*laughs* "Good one, Justin! But seriously, we've gotta keep her around for John Stewart over in Green Lantern Corps."

"Okay - so Relic will just slaughter the others, then. And destroy their central battery, for good measure."

"And don't forget their entity! That way it's like, Relic is so bad-ass he killed Love itself!"

"Nice! I like that. But what about the villain corps?"

"Sinestro's right out - he's wearing a yellow ring again in Forever Evil."

"Yeah, we gotta keep him around anyway because the Sinestro Corps War was so popular."

"There's always plenty of background characters there that never even had a single line of dialogue..."

"All right - so that's settled. The Red Lanterns?"

"Can't! They've got their own series. Plus, Guy Gardner's their leader right now."

"Hmm. Can we kill everybody but him?"

"Well, the title's Red Lanterns, plural - so..."

"Let's keep the cat! People love the cat."

"Yeah - and Bleez, for the sexual tension with Guy!"

"Naw, Ice is alive again... so we can afford to lose Bleez."

"And Larfleeze (hey - that rhymes!)?"

"...has a series now, too."

"Dang. I know! What if we had Relic kill off some Green Lanterns?"

"Eh, that's been done before. It'd have to be a main character to have any kind of real impact."

"Gardner's out, as we just discussed - can't kill Hal, because he was in the movie..."

"What about Kyle?"

"What about him? He's a White Lantern now, so we'll inexplicably be leaving him alone."

"...right! Because white's not a color, it's a hue."

"Exactly. And, speaking of..."

"John Stewart? The public was already up in arms when Green Lantern wasn't black in the movie!"

"Now-now, Justin - African-American."

"Right. Oh - I know! What about Jediah Caul? Because we already cancelled his series..."

"BRILLIANT!"

DC: Deceased Characters.