DC Comics are rebooting. Everything.

Their entire comic line will reset at Issue #1, from Batman to Superman and beyond. This is a great thing if you’ve lost track of continuity (and who hasn’t?), and a terrible thing given the continuity is what gives a lot of these comics their weight.

Amongst a web full of coverage, the Snarkmarket team have chipped in with a trifecta of thoughtful analysis.

Robin Sloan - The Cosmic Custodians:

Today, you don’t go work at Marvel and DC because of what they are; you go because of what they have. It’s almost like a natural resource. Superman and Batman are potent substances. They have this incredible innate energy, this incredible mythic density, built up over decades. They really are like petroleum-a bright eon of individual organic contributions all compressed into this powerful stuff that we can now burn for light, for entertainment, for money.

Today, this is really the only pitch that DC can make to a talented creator: Come, come, work for us. We’re the only ones with sweet Gotham crude.

Tim Carmody - The Cave, The Corps, The League:

Green Lantern is about will-the impossible will that allows you to believe you can harness that cosmic energy for your own purposes. Batman is about fear-the fear that allows his opponents to believe that he is more than just a man.

In this allegory, the authors who turned to indie creator-owned comics in the 1990s out of mistrust for the big legacy publishers are clearly Batman. And the ones who returned to reignite those same publishers a decade later (in some cases, it’s the same people) are the Green Lantern Corps. 

Gavin Craig - Hacking the story:

But rather than thinking of continuity as some sort of sacred history of tradition, let’s remember that it’s a technology. And like any technology, it might be most interesting once we start thinking about how it can be hacked.

Plus who can resist getting in at the ground floor with Batman #1.