Well maybe All Star will provide a healthy alternative to a general audience and readers looking for something iconic while DC is content to spiral their mainline further into "mature reader" hell. I expect the female characters of the DCU to be all either killed or raped at least once before the end of the decade.
I was just at Superman Homepage looking at their IC retrospective and I love how the usual "kids don't read comics anymore" is touted as justification for going in the exclusively "adult" direction. (and as usual adult here means gory and overly self concious). Does it never occur to them that the only reason kids don't read comics has less to do with video games and more to do with the past 20 years of comics doing everything they can to boot them out as a potential audience? With only the occasional underwhelming sop to them like the Adventures line that DC obviously could give a squirt about. Yet they have the nerve to wonder why sales are down. Hmmm...
Well, Brad Meltzer admitted that his original idea for Identity Crisis was that Deathstroke would slit Zatanna's throat instead of just sucker-punching her, but he decided it was too easy an out. Considering how Zatanna is pretty much the DCU's official sex symbol, I don't think that would have gone over too well....
As for comics ignoring kids and sales being down, you'd be amazed by how many fans have openly stated that they don't want new readers coming in and that new readers aren't needed. The attitude they have is that they alone are the lifeblood of the industry, and they should get to keep it to themselves. They're also the ones complaining that comics are getting too "kiddie" or "too Silver Age" and that trash-fests like Identity Crisis and its negative fallout on the whole DCU is desperately needed to bring more "maturity" to the comics. The current hardcore readership doesn't want kids coming in, and since kids aren't coming in, DC caters to the fanboys. A vicious cycle of self-destruction, if you ask me. I remember challenging this fan mindset a while back, and I got told that they don't care if comics die out due to lack of new readership, so long as they get the comics THEY want.
And since most adults couldn't be bothered to read comics (you can tell them about the adult, award-winning works in the industry, but they'll still dismiss them as kids' stuff and not give them a second look), what's the point of making comics "adults only"?
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