Justice League 7 is better than the first 6

[madmarva]

I'm not necessarily a Didio hater. He allowed Tomasi to hire Johns to retool Hal Jordan. On one hand, I like that he is willing to try things — Wednesday Comics, weekly publication, All-Star Superman — but he's had as many failures as successes, if not more. If he were a college football coach, he would have been on the hot seat going into this relaunch.

Currently, though, Didio's got to be riding a high with executives. While I know some can't stand the reboot, in terms of sales — at least in the short term — it's the biggest success DC can claim in ages. For the most part, the books are shipping on time and they are selling well.

^As for the way Johns is writing Hal — and for that matter, every other character at DC right now — to me, they have to be viewed as new characters with similarities to the ones residing in the previous continuity.

Johns didn't just forget how he was portraying Hal previously. He's made a choice that in this continuity, Hal is immature and a jerk, at least when he's around the other JL members. He's a frat boy, basically Flash Thompson with a power ring. We may see other differences with the characters that are again conscious decisions.

The stuff with Wonder Woman that was under discussion in another thread is an example too. When she goes from basically coming to life like Adam or a golem to being a demi-goddess sired by Zeus, it opens up story points that were addressed in the latest issue of Azzerello's Wonder Woman title. Those don't bother me much because Wonder Woman isn't a precious character to me like say Hal Jordan or Superman or Batman.

After reading the first arcs of around 15 DC titles and a couple issues of others, it's clear to me that what DC dubbed a soft relaunch is much harder than we were led to believe. I no longer assume anything that happened in previous DC comics as being "in continuity" now, until it's mentioned in the books. DC has pretty much unchained its creators from the past continuity. They can use it if they want, they can change it, modify it or just go their own way. The previous continuity is dictating very little other than perhaps the essence or core of the characters, according to DC, not the fans.

What DC readers have to decide for themselves is if the past adventures are more important to them than the current and future ones. Can they reconcile one with the other? Do they even want to?

That's a tough decision for a lot of us because these characters and their histories and adventures have meant so much to us over the years, but the only option we have of new adventures of somewhat similar characters with familiar names are these new books.

It reminds me of when many of my favorite characters were replaced in the post-Crisis universe, particularly with Hal Jordan.

I didn't like that Hal Jordan and for that matter the GL Corps was abused and shunted to the side, but for a time, I did enjoy Kyle Raynor's book, so I read it.

That's what I'm doing now with the DC books. I'm reading the ones I like and letting the rest go. Really it's the same as I've always done with comics, but with higher prices and uncomfortable changes, my reading stack gets thinner and thinner.