Flashpoint!

I remember reading an interview with Alan Moore where he stated that comic companies will try anything to bring in sales except have good writers and good artists. Flashpoint is a perfect example of this.

Flashpoint is DC's new event, which follows Brightest Day (which followed Blackest Night), and it has over 40 tie in issues. Trying to come up with the biggest marketing blitz in comics history apparently, DC has also decided to cancel all but two of their ongoing series (Green Lantern and Batman Inc are spared) and launch 52 (!) new ongoing series at issue #1. Re-launching a series from #1 with a new creative team isn't new, but nobody's ever done it for an entire line. The more important question to ask, however, is whether any of this will be worth reading. And if the stories will be good, why the re-numbering gimmick?

Not all of the new series have been announced, but a few sound promising. Grant Morrison writing Superman and Brian Azzaerrelo writing Wonder Woman for example. But again, these series would be good regardless of whether they were numbeed #1 or not.

Within three years, most of these new series will probably be cancelled and the old standbys (Action Comics, Detective Comics, etc) will have returned to their original numbering. How much continuity will be altered remains to be seen. Altering continuity is fine if it's in the interest of a good story, but if it's done at the behest of crass editorial policy (Younger! Hipper!) then it tends not to last and be badly received.

DC is trying awfully hard, but so far they haven't gotten me interested enough to buy a single issue of Flashpoint.