Based on Internet speculation, rumors and cryptic tweets from DCs two co-publishers, it appears that DC is knocking on the line-wide reboot door for a third time in the past five years. A reboot—for those not in the know—is where a company takes all of their characters and their history and decide, NOPE! We’re going to start brand new! And they reset the clock and pretend like the past never happened. This is a pretty big deal because the history of characters in comic books goes back decades and a full clean-slate like this is an extreme rarity. It has happened in both major comic book companies (DC did it in 1985 with Crisis on Infinite Earths and again 2011 with the New 52 and Marvel did, kinda, for the first time in their 60 year history very recently following Secret Wars) and a few movie franchises. To the viewing and reading public, reboots are like threesomes in a committed relationship: It’s interesting and exciting the first time it happens, but three or four times in a very quick period of time makes everyone a little suspicious and dubious.

DCs constant threat of upheaval is certainly an interesting strategy, but here's five reasons why it sucks for us readers.

Stories Begin To Not Matter

In the old days, before Hollywood got their greedy mitts on our nerdom and started printing cash with our action figures, comic books news was mostly relegated to internet chat rooms and Angelfire fansites. These days comic book stuff is printed all over the internet and in some of the most major newspapers in the country. News of a line-wide reboot from the major publishers now garner serious press months before it’s going to happen. This straight up sucks balls for the average comic book enthusiast because it tells us that whatever story we’re currently interested in is going to end, mostly unceremoniously, in order to better fit with the editorial directives.

this thing ruined bunches of stories

Readers end up in a limbo where they know that in a few months the story they’re reading simply won’t fucking matter. Will our hero defeat the bad guy? Who cares! Will the good guy and the bad guy discover their secret origins and learn that they’re actually - oh well looks like we’ll never fucking know because the world is ending/ colliding with an alternate universe/ everyone is turning into cats. It’s like watching a movie and halfway through someone yells the ending directly into your face, throws your popcorn on the ground and gives you the finger.

You Alienate Your Fans

We fans love our favorite characters. We buy their books, watch their movies, create unhealthy obsessions with their every action. We spend, what some would consider, an inordinate amount of time, money and thought on them. We, as fans, are the ones that are primarily impacted by these line-wide total company restarts. The first time it happens it can be an exciting time. What will happen to these characters? What new stories are going to be told now that they’re free of continuity? How will the new characters and old characters mesh in this new world?

I will never forgive you for the grave you dug for this title.

The more you do it, however, the less we care about what might happen and the more we bitch, “Not this again!” When the stories and characters we love, their histories and legacies, begin to feel impermanent and unimportant we just stop caring. We don’t buy the books because we’ve lost faith in the editors and their creative direction. We’ll still go back and read their old adventures but it will take a lot of good word of mouth to bring us—and our dollars—back to the store.

You Keep Treading Old Ground

For some reason every time there is a complete company overhaul of comics properties (soft or hard—ithankyouverymuch—winkwinknudgenudge) it seems like they feel the need to go over origins all over again. Companies act like no one knows that Superman was shot out into the universe by the worst parents ever. Or that Bruce Wayne watched his parents die because instead of calling their chauffeur they decided to walk down “Crime Alley”. (Quick aside here: The Wayne’s were the most influential family in an entire city. They were like Gotham Royalty. I get the fact that they left the play, or movie, or whatever in order to make their son feel better - any reasonable parent would - but what parent decides that instead of heading to the front of the theater and getting in a limo they should wander through “Crime Alley” for a breath of fresh air? If CPS existed in Gotham they would have intervened.)

we know this story so well it can be told in 8 words.

How many times do we need to see Krypton destroyed? The Wayne Family gunned down? Uncle Ben give his “with great power” speech? When Grant Morrison can capture Superman’s origin in four panels, on one page, we’ve reached the pen-ultimate of deconstruction. Each time a reboot of this nature happens we get, at minimum, six months of exposition reestablishing the status quo with all of the age old stories that we already know. How many times do we need to watch Uncle Ben die? We’re pushing three in the movies and twice in the comics...that poor bastard.

It Starts To Feel Like a Cash Grab

Let's be perfectly clear about reboots: whether it's for comic books, movies or TV shows; almost no one in the audience is clamoring for a reboot. Revivals? Yes. Reboots? Not so much. Nobody was begging for a reboot of RoboCop, Total Recall or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but they got made because there is no reason, in this day and age, that an intellectual property should be left alone when you can beat some cash out of it's corpse. And that's really what this is starting to feel like DC.

This is clearly not a marketing scheme at all.

Everyone knows that when The New 52 launched it was a huge boost in sales that slowly declined month over month. DC, you caused another uptick in sales but again, with creative changes and editorial interference, that good will has slowly tapered off again. So what do you do? Tell the internet that a "Rebirth" is on the way. Stir up the fervor and hope that you can, maybe, recreate that cash influx and get some sort of interest back in the line. Each time you do this it feels less and less like an interesting change in creative direction and more of an attempt to stack bags of money so you have a fort to hide in from your fans.

Eventually No One Gives A Shit

Exciting things are exciting because they are rare and they take us out of our comfort zone and expose us to something we may not have experienced before. The first time you go skydiving is one of the most fearboner inducing moments of your life. If you had to sky dive every day in order to commute to work it would probably start feeling less and less thrilling. Shaking things up in any well established property is usually good. Most of the time it brings in new eyes and ears to an idea that some had given up on; but it has to be done right and it can’t be done too often. Doctor Who gets a new Doctor every few years and the martini torch is passed on to a new James Bond every decade or so. Now imagine if that was done, over and over again. A new James Bond every year, a new Doctor every few months. It would get very old very quickly.

this would get boring if you had to do it in order to poop

That's kinda what this feels like and I'm kinda done.  I simply don't have the effort or the energy to give half of a fuck about yet another reboot. You had my attention five years ago but you slowly, and repeatedly, gave me the finger for my effort.  Unless you're going to get Scott Snyder and Jim Lee to do WildCATS or give Warren Ellis a small mountain of cash and liquor to upend some of your increasingly stale ideas, I think it may be time that we part ways for a while. If you need me, I'll be reading my old copies of The Authority and wondering when you're gonna pull your head out of your ass.