The following is an (poorly written) opinion, the views expressed are not the views of Gotham Knights Online or any other members of it’s staff, and sometimes not even the person writing it.

So welcome to the second entry of my weekly column, you may remember my last column hit the site back in December (I think), so I am a little behind, but you compare it to some of the delays at DC Comics and it is not so bad.

So of course I have to sound off on the big changes headed to DC, at first I hated the idea and was ready to stop collecting comics and sell off my collection. The more I read about it, and thought about it I changed my thinking on it. So yes DC is blowing up their world and starting over on all the characters and titles, but is that such a bad thing?

Superman and Batman are both in their seventies, there have been endless stories told about both characters, and each time a new story is told you have to add another layer to their character.  Think about how hard it must be for the creators to work with those layers and create new ones.

In the case of Batman just think about what might happen: Bruce back as the only Batman, Dick back as Nightwing, Cassandra Cain back somewhere, new take on classic stories, a new character driven stories where one doesn’t have to know 70 years of history, the prospect of Stephanie Brown becoming real and wanting to date me, The possibilities are endless here people!

This idea is great for new readers:  I picked up Batman RIP collection edition after not reading any comics for years, and I had no idea what the frack I read. When I seriously started collecting shortly after that I got a lot of collected editions, a ton of back issues, and read everything I could on all the characters online. All that work came in handy when I temporary lost my mind and told Bob I wanted to be a part of the site. Not everyone is a devoted of a fan or nuts like I am to do all the work, and had I not taken the job at the site I am almost positive I would have stopped collecting comics a while ago. This is why starting over for the characters makes sense, bring in the new readers fresh with a clean slate and bring them up to speed rather quickly. For the readers that have been reading for a while, I really think a different perspective will do some good, breathe some new life into characters that have done some really crazy stuff over the years, maybe make them more relatable to the reader.

I know what you are thinking; what about all those comics I have spent years collecting, are all those stories gone and useless? They shouldn’t be, a new direction for DC won’t make me love my favorite comics any less, Detective Comics #790 will still be my favorite comic, Batman #615 will still be my favorite cover, I still think Dick Grayson/Nightwing is my favorite character. Your collection is still yours and you have your favorites, and those moments and stories that you will never forget.

So give it a shot, you might be surprised what might happen, then again it could an even worse idea than Greedo shooting first, and personally I can’t wait to see which. We start finding out tomorrow what all will be going down in the DC Universe,

DC; I do have some requests, make sure Krypto and Ace are around more, I love the two dogs and want to see more of them. You kill off Dick Grayson I won’t be very happy at all. Make the women of the DC Universe less like Barbie dolls and more realistic, I know plenty of women who are beautiful and that kick ass who don’t have boobs bigger than their heads, bring back the strong role models little girls can look up to. Besides some books do tend oversell the sex angle a little bit, I am not anti-sex but it doesn’t need to be over the top.  Lastly put a new mix of characters in there, maybe add some strong gay characters, maybe a major character gets sick or has disease that affects them, and just make the characters more relatable to the real world.

Well I would say I will be back next week, but I think I said that last time… and yeah. I appreciate you reading this and your thoughts, positive, negative whatever feel free to email me at cory@gothamknightsonline.com.

-Cory

Senior Editor