Variant Coverage   "The Final Straw" By Adam White Published: 2006-08-31

DC finally did it.

First they kill Blue Beetle (Ted Kord), then they foul up everything with Infinite Crisis. But with the death of Booster Gold in 52 #15, I have had my fill of DC Comics.

When Ted Kord was brutally murdered in Countdown to Infinite Crisis , I just about dropped every DC title on the spot. I’m not one of those morons that cannot separate comics from reality, but I really liked the character and felt that he died for no reason other than shock value, which is the worst (and cheapest) reason to kill a character. I refused to follow IC because of that, and when I browsed the series in stores I saw my decision was correct, as it was one horrible series. Nevertheless, I thought maybe once DC got through all that crap and moved to OYL that some titles might get back to a readable quality. A few did, but most fizzled very quickly.

Since OYL began, I have found that Catwoman has been worthwhile for the first time since Ed Brubaker left the title, and it remains good. Manhunter was the best title DC put out before IC and still is at the present time, and I will follow it until it ends because Andreyko and Pina have made it one of the best series around. Jonah Hex is great as well, thanks to Palmiotti and Gray, and I will follow it as long as they write the title. Other than that, I have picked up 52 and several other titles since then, but I won’t waste time talking about those now.

52 has been a mediocre series at best, and flat-out bad at its worst. I liked the space stuff with Animal Man, and the Black Adam stories have potential, but the rest are either so-so or just boring. I have stuck with the series solely to see where the stories I did like were going, but they seem to be the least focused upon stories

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in the series, and the Animal Man scenes are M.I.A. and must have been dropped for the most part. Through all of it, I hated most what they have done to Booster Gold, one of my favorite DC characters, turning him into a selfish, unlikeable loser, which is what he is “supposed to be,” according to Dan DiDio. Well, I have to say that DiDio is completely wrong about Booster, and the fact that he feels that way about him shows how little he has looked into the character. DiDio and everyone involved with 52 promised big things were in store for Booster Gold and that he would realize his potential as a character; somehow I feel that trashing Booster and then murdering him for no reason fifteen issues into the series really didn’t live up to that promise.

Now, I’m not being juvenile, saying “You killed my favorite character! I hate you!” — I am saying that the current direction of DC Comics as a whole and the editorial decisions leading it in that direction are wrong-headed and give very little thought to the future of the company. Restarting things every ten years gets old really fast, and gives no satisfaction to long-term readers (and pretty much precludes having long-term readers). Constant retcons and restarts also shows a lack of creativity, an inability on the part of the company to allow creators to keep the characters fresh without first doing away with everything that came before. The current DC editorial regime promotes stagnation through false change, and alienates readers in the process.

DiDio and company have been shouting long and hard that they are making the newer, “friendlier” DC, a universe without the dark and depressing storylines and characters. Yet in order to do that they felt that murdering the two characters that best represented that better universe (Blue Beetle and Booster Gold) was

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the way to go. Not only that, but they chose to give them meaningless deaths and tarnish everyone’s memory of Booster Gold in the process just for laughs. Look at what they’ve done to poor Ralph Dibny — they murder his wife and turn him in to a shattered nutcase clinging onto stuffed dolls made by charlatan Kryptonian cultists. This is the friendly new DC? The story with Dibny is the darkest, most depressing story I have seen in a long time, and the destruction of Booster Gold was pathetic and malicious.

Batman should be dark; he’s a dark character (the Dark Knight — ring any bells?), yet they have turned him into an imbecile. The Green Lanterns are all goons, and Superman is just a stale has-been. And don’t get me started on Wonder Woman. If making major DC characters inane and destroying/murdering all the better “second-tier” characters is what it takes to make DC “fun,” then you can count me out.

52 #15 was not only my last issue of that series, but I hope to sell my whole run on eBay at some future point to try and get my money back. With the exception of Manhunter, Jonah Hex, and Catwoman, all of which hardly even seem like DC titles, I will no longer be buying any DC comics as long as the current editorial regime remains because they have no respect for the characters or the readers. The new DC is a dismal place indeed, and really has no place for me in it. I hope that any of you reading this that currently pick up DC titles will seriously reevaluate what you buy and if there is really any point to continuing to do so in the long or short term.

I gave DC the benefit of the doubt longer than I could really afford, and this final insult was how they repaid me. This is not a decision I have made easily or lightly, yet this is what it has come to. So thanks for the memories, because that’s all I’ll have of DC Comics for the time being.

—CCdC—

 

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