I'm really saddened by the re-numbering.
Me too. It's short-sighted and stupid.
It's obscene. Why can't they simply use the existing numbering on its old place, but add a "new" re-numbering (starting "#1" onwards on a place at the right side of the cover? So new readers could tell that those are issues of the "new" Superman et all, yet we "older" readers would get to keep our comic-book history.
Man. Just imagine. A book series that was continuously published
for almost 100 years will be canceled and relaunched, starting with #1-- and why? Just because they hope it will sell a couple thousand exemplars more than it does currently. Never mind the fact that that same strategy failed almost 20 years ago by an even more successful comic publisher.
It's so wrong. ACTION COMICS and DETECTIVE COMICS are an important cornerstone of American history, culture and heritage: they originated the super-hero genre, they launched the original comic book medium in America (Disney and the rest came later, if I remember right), they kept the comic book medium in existence past the late Seventies (and thusly, encouraged kids to read "real books" in a world where TV was quickly becoming the national hobby) and alongside Disney, the Movies and the Loony Toons, introduced people around the whole world to American culture.
And now it will all be thrown away as if so much trash. Because it isn't "contemporary" enough.
As far as Superman goes, they never give him a chance to be Superman. There's always some big high concept idea being thrown in the way of Superman doing the thing that he used to always do--be a super-hero.
As long as editors keep monkeying with Superman and don't let him have his stories, they're never going to restore him to the place he should be. Reboots aren't going to fix that.
The problem isn't with Superman--it's with the people who publish him.
True. Cary Bates could create at a moment's notice new concepts that nonetheless could fit seamlessly within the frameworks of whatever series he worked at the time -- but none of the current crop of creators seems to be able to do that. They only can either endlessly recycle old concepts-- or they need to reboot the whole thing, to get "room" to introduce "new" things.
So rather than use the writers who
proved their creativity and their ability to work with characters as powerful, complex and near-mythical as Superman for 15-20 years at a time, they want to use "star creators"-- the people who aren't very creative but can work to the media. Typical. And people keep wondering why comics as a medium is fading.
