The “Rebirth” project continues at DC Comics. Last week we looked at the latest revamps of Aquaman, Batman, Flash and Green Arrow titles. This week brings Green Lantern, Superman, Titans, Wonder Woman and — as of July 6 — Justice League.
• GREEN LANTERN: We’ve only got half of this reboot: “Green Lanterns,” starring the two new Emerald Gladiators of Earth. The second title, “Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps,” in which the best-known GL takes on the Sinestro Corps in space, doesn’t debut until July 27.
Meanwhile, we’ve had three issues to look at our new Green Lanterns, misunderstood Muslim Simon Baz, and agoraphobic Latina Jessica Cruz. They are, essentially, rookie cosmic cops with Earth as their beat.
Both have serious problems. Baz isn’t trusted by the public, as some mistakes in his youth have placed him on a terrorist watch list. He has trust issues himself; he doesn’t even rely on his power ring, being the only GL to carry a gun. Cruz, meanwhile, got her start being possessed by an alien from a parallel dimension, aggravating a mental illness. Her battle to overcome agoraphobia displays a different kind of heroism than we normally see.
Simon is all impulse, so is less interesting to this reader than Jessica, who is all anxiety. But I’ll root for both of them while they take on the Red Lantern Corps in their first storyline, “Red Dawn.”
Both “Green Lanterns” and “Hal Jordan” ship twice monthly.
• SUPERMAN: After two issues of “Action Comics” and three of “Superman,” the contours of the new Man of Steel are taking shape. It should be noted that he’s really an old one.
See, in 2011 DC re-launched its superhero line, complete with a new Superman. That guy, the one who dated Wonder Woman, is dead — at least currently — while a Superman from the pre-2011 DC Universe has taken his place. This is the one who married Lois Lane in 1996, and they have a preteen super son, Jonathan.
The “Superman” title is concerned with the Super-family in Kansas, while “Action” focuses more on Superman’s rivalry with Lex Luthor, who has taken over as protector of Metropolis, and is wearing the “S” shield.
Some writers complain that writing straight-arrow characters like Superman is too hard, and that they need to have a dark side to make it interesting. “Action” and “Superman,” chockablock with dynamic characters and story springboards, demonstrate that those writers simply suffer from a dearth of imagination. These two books have wide, open potential, befitting the Man of Tomorrow.
• TITANS: In the 2011 reboot, the character Wally “Kid Flash” West — a red-haired boy from Blue Valley, Neb., who was The Flash’s sidekick — was erased from DC Universe history. That had enormous repercussions (none of them good) for the Titans team, where he had been a founding member.
“Titans” has returned Wally and his history, but it’s slightly changed. While he is again a founding member of the Titans, along with Robin, Wonder Girl and Aqualad, there have been some additions. Speedy (Green Arrow’s sidekick) and Lilith (a girl with psychic powers) have been retroactively added as founding members.
Now they’re all young adults, and as they have in previous iterations, several go by new code names. For example, Dick Grayson, the first Robin, is Nightwing. Roy “Speedy” Harper is now Arsenal.
That’s not new. But what is new is that “Titans” ties directly to the central conceit of Rebirth, in that the 2011 reboot — dubbed “The New 52” — was caused not by editors and writers, but by another character, the cosmically powerful Dr. Manhattan from “Watchmen.” If Dr. Manhattan’s machinations are to be revealed, it’s likely to happen in “Titans.”
• WONDER WOMAN: One of the knocks on the Amazing Amazon is that her origin and back story have been changed so many times that it gets confusing which parts of her 70-plus-year history count. Amazingly, Rebirth turns this negative into a positive, by saying that all of Wonder Woman’s various origins are true — because Dr. Manhattan keeps creating them!
Wonder Woman discovers this by using her Lasso of Truth on herself, where she informs herself of Dr. Manhattan’s interference. Now she’s on a quest to find out who she “really” is — and to make the naked blue guy from “Watchmen” pay for his actions.
That’s all pretty interesting, moreso than “Wonder Woman” usually is. Or perhaps I’m just dazzled by WW’s new uniform, leather armor based on ancient Greco-Roman design.
• JUSTICE LEAGUE: Of all the Rebirth books we’ve seen so far (there are still quite a few in the pipeline), DC’s premier team book is the one with the fewest surprises or revelations.
The League doesn’t yet trust the “replacement” Superman, but that doesn’t seem like it’s going to last. And the team itself is a variant of the core group: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Aquaman, Cyborg and the two rookie Green Lanterns.
But here again there’s a suggestion that Dr. Manhattan may be exposed. Both Superman and Batman (plus Lois Lane) suspect that his being on this world, available when the other Superman died, is just too much coincidence to swallow.
Rebirth is making the revamp part of the story. This time, the characters in the books, like readers, are aware that something has changed. And the characters are looking for the responsible party.
