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After reading in last month's Grey Matters that one of my fellow writers was talking about how much he liked "Marvel Now!" rather than the "New 52" by DC Comics, I thought I would put in my plugged nickel on this whole thing.
When DC Comics announced the "New 52" about twenty-four months ago, I was excited. I was still collecting the floppies of comics at the time, and I wanted to get into some of the DC Comics titles, but could not because of massive amounts of continuity and other baggage that long running titles come with. With the "New 52" I could easily start reading a DC title with no trouble because everything was restarted without the baggage of the past.
DC kept their big name titles like Batman (and the multitude of Batman based books), Superman and Wonder Woman as well as giving us some titles that we might want to try like Men of War, OMAC and Mister Terrific in the New 52. Yes those three titles did not last that long, but at least DC gave them a shot. I actually read at least one issue of each of those three titles and they each had their own good and bad points. Those bad points lead to some people posting reviews that are unflattering, but if you read reviews and let yourself be swayed then I would say that you need to take a chance on something bad. You may find out that you like it. You could also read an unbiased synopsis of the book and see if you want to give it a try.
Meanwhile when Marvel announced their "Marvel Now!" initiative I was like "(yawn), bored next!" They were just going to be renumbering their titles from number one, changing long running creative teams and the names of some books. That's all. They would still be mired by 40-50 years of continuity and make them hard for the new reader to get into without them knowing what has been going on since the beginning. I personally don't know anyone who has that much free time and money on their hands to get to know every nuance of what has happened in the mutant or Avengers books.
Marvel has 6.02 x 10^23 Mutant Books and Avengers books out there and they are bringing more of them out each month. I mean Marvel seems to have staked its entire existence on those two teams while other characters have fallen to the wayside because they do not have the drawing power of the X-Men or Avengers. Looking at the release lists for the upcoming weeks (as of this writing) there is a very limited number of books that people would know that are not Avengers or Mutant books. There's Morbius: The Living Vampire #1, Red She-Hulk #61 and Venom #29. Some people who have a passing fancy might know Venom from the Spider-Man movies, but who knows who Red She-Hulk or Morbius are outside the die hard comic fan. It seems to me that pretty soon all of Marvel Comics' characters are going to be either in the Avengers or the X-Men, and that will be pretty dull.
I know the above can be said for some of DC Comic's choices for the "New 52" but at least if I was curious about the DC characters I could pick up the trade from Amazon, the local comic store or local library and read it and at least kind of know what is happening with that character in the "New 52." Meanwhile with the Marvel books you have to go out and buy at least the main A vs X trade when it comes out to know what the heck is going on with those two teams now. By the time that trade comes out then you will be really behind and Marvel will have gone on to their next "Mega Crossover Event!"
The whole problem is that Marvel should have done like DC and blown up their whole line-up and started again. That would have given people who saw the Avenger's Movie last year and were interested in the team they could have gone out and bought an issue #1 and been all set. Either Marvel did not have the foresight that The Avengers movie would do well like the other movies like Iron Man and Captain America and adjust the team accordingly or they were so set in their ways that it was a "damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!" sort of thing. Instead of having the team that was in the movie in the comic, the Avengers instead were characters like Wolverine, Spider-Man and Black Panther. I don't think that would have gotten a lot of readers into the books. They were also starting up A vs X and nobody outside comic circles could tell you how this little spat came together without the help of the internet.
DC's "reboot" of their universe made their comics easily accessible to the new reader and gave them something to get to know. Meanwhile Marvel with their "Marvel Now!" initiative just gave readers new numbers for everything, different creative teams and some new titles. They would not be accessible to the new reader without a lot of time on the internet researching or a lot of money spent on trades. One of those would be good for someone with a lot of free time and money and the other is only good if you have a lot of free time. Say what you want about Dan Didio, Jim Lee and the other head honchos at DC; they managed to get a lot more people reading their books again after so long. They did lose some readers because people rage-quit their DC books without finding out what the New 52 was all about, but the readers they gained probably made up for it.
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