Here are some reactions by comic pros and fans to DC’s announcement that their entire line of comic books would be starting over with new #1 issues.  I’ll have a few thoughts of my own as well at the end.

Lore Sjoberg tweeted what is probably the most concise summary of how comic book reboots work:

DC Reboots Simplified:
1. Erase all the baggage and start fresh.
2. Wait about 12 issues.
3. “The Return of Streaky the Super Cat!”

Dan Donovan of my popular haunt reacted with a practical concern on the part of comic shops everywhere:

Now that I’ve slept on this news overnight, one thing about this announcement really stands out to me:  52 new titles debuting in September.  

That seems like commercial suicide to me.  I’m not a retailer, but how is any comic shop supposed to order these titles?  They are apparently new versions of the characters by new creative teams with new numbering.  Retailers have exactly Zero data to base their orders on.  If they go overly aggressive, they risk tying up large amounts of cash and getting stuck with boxes and boxes of unsold product.  If they go light (or even use today’s number, which for most titles will be meaningless given the creative shuffles), they risk running out of product.  Unless DC plans to make the first three months (Sept-Nov) of the relaunch returnable, I see this being a disaster.

They should have released a core group of titles (Ex: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash, JLA, Titans) and maybe used Action/Adventure/Detective as a Showcase-style book to slowly introduce other titles.  I understand that they’re trying to make a HUGE splash, but in this economy, I just don’t see retailers giving them the numbers they’re looking for.

…  I don’t see how retailers can order non-returnable books with any kind of confidence.

Take [Birds of Prey], for example.  Let’s say a retailer is selling 20 copies per month now.  How many of the new BoP #1 do they order for September?  Remember, this will be BoP without Gail Simone, and with a new (and as yet unknown, but that could change with the solicits) status quo for the team.  I’m betting that retailer would only order 5 copies of the new BoP.

What about Gail’s new title?  Suppose it is a new Marvel Family book.  Does the retailer order 20 copies based on sales of BoP… a book that featured Oracle and Black Canary, characters who are arguably more popular now than the Marvel Family?  What else do they have to go on?  Winnick’s Trial of Shazam mini?

Unless DC makes these books returnable, I don’t see how the sales could be anything more than underwhelming, because the vast majority of retailers don’t have the resources to invest huge sums of money into such a large quantity of unproven books all at once.  Regardless of the quality of the books, the quantity all but ensures that this will fail.

Brad Guigar of Evil Inc. was quick with a perceptive reaction … and although he doesn’t touch on Dan Donovan’s concern, it may provide an explanation:

A comics publisher announcing a retcon is nothing new. But there — buried among the glowing quotes from creative powerhouses Jim Lee and Geoff Johns — was the real news:

JLA #1 will have a “day-and-date” digital download.

…”Day and Date” means that the digital download of the comic will be available on the same day that the print comic hits the comic shops. …

The Big Two had been avoiding D&D because of a long relationship with comics retailers — and rightly so. Comics retailers buoyed comics publishers through some awfully tough times. So they’d delay the digital release of their titles until after the printed versions had already been on the shelves for a while.

But times are tougher. And the Big Two are seeing the power of digital distribution. Good business dictates they take their profits where they can, and if that means making sales to iPad-wielding fanboys before they can read the spoilers online, then the decision is clear.

D&D is here to stay. Marvel will announce a D&D title by the middle of summer. Guaranteed.

And while that’s great news if you have a digital tablet, it’s mighty bad news if you own a comic shop. Or if you, like me, spend a lot of happy hours inside one.

D&D is going to kill monthly printed comics. As tablets become more widespread, D&D digital distribution is going to squeeze out floppies, eventually replacing them completely. Popular titles will finally reach print, in the form of trades, but a significant portion of them will remain forever pixels.

So in a way, maybe the mainstream media got it right. Maybe the big news is the retcon. But it’s not a new pair of tights for Wonder Woman or a different origin for Green Lantern. It’s the retconning of the comics business as we know it. And, like all retcons, some of us will love it and others will hate it.

Be sure to read the whole thing.

As for my “it’s not a reboot” post of a few days ago, I’m still not willing to take it back.  They may make Superman younger.  It’ll be interesting to see whether he’s still married or not.  But unless you go the full John Byrne Man of Steel route, it’s not a reboot, just a little tooling and some superficial changes.