DC Comics 2015 Wishlist: 10 Things That Must Happen

9. Create €˜Definitive€™ Versions Of Characters...

These days, it seems that DC characters are being re-wired from the ground up in every other issue. Frankly, this needs to stop. One of the major things that DC traditionally has over Marvel (and every other publisher, for that matter) is that you could pick up any given issue of a DC book and know exactly where you stood with it. Clark Kent, for example, works at The Daily Planet, is in love with Lois Lane and fights crime as Superman. Everybody knows that. Everybody that buys a Superman book expects to see that. By keeping this €˜story shorthand€™ in place, even new readers can become instantly familiar with the DC Universe and its many trappings, without needing a bunch of stuff explained to them at any given time. As Stan Lee famously said, €œevery comic book is somebody€™s first comic book€. In this way, too much radical revision over too short a period can be a bad thing. Essentially, evolution, NOT revolution, is the order of the day in today€™s comics. Of course, bold, sweeping changes can still happen (hey, it worked when DC replaced Jay Garrick with Barry Allen, or Alan Scott with Hal Jordan), but when they do, the changes need to be lasting, not frivolous. New readers are picking up comic books every day and discovering the joys inherent to these characters, which is why it is important that they retain the aspects that people will already be familiar with from video games, movies and cartoons. To this end, it would be prudent for DC to create a €˜definitive€™ version of each character, one that ties in the best of the past with the promise of the present. Visually modelling the New 52€™s Green Arrow on his Smallville counterpart was a smart move, but re-positioning Ollie Queen as an annoying, bratty kid, was not. This new Green Arrow is unrecognisable to fans of the character that have followed him from Neal Adams to Mike Grell and onwards to Kevin Smith. Providing a concise character bio on the site, with links to the trade versions of where, when and why major events happened, would be easy enough to do, and could potentially drive sales higher and higher into the stratosphere, making it easier than ever to start collecting comics! In the comics, an event series capable of establishing a €˜definitive€™ timeline/personality for all DC characters is desperately needed, and appears to be on the horizon at the time of writing. By fusing the past and the present together once again, DC can create €˜optimum versions€™ of all characters; this would make it easier for new fans to jump aboard the good ship DC and for lapsed fans to start reading DC books again. Before you rush to point out flaws in this idea, consider that the approach worked extremely well when Grant Morrison applied it to Batman during his extended run. It fuelled a great story arc for the character, together with his freshest interpretation in decades - and it re-sold old comics from the 50€™s that had been doing nothing but sitting in the archives for six decades. €œOptimum Batman€ as Morrison memorably called his rendition of the character, was a primeval fusion of every different take on the character, as viewed through the prism of today. If it worked for Batman, why can€™t it work for everyone else?