I have some credit at my comics shoppe, so of course I had to get this! Join me under the cut!

As with many of my page-by-page posts, two things must be explained before you begin. I have not read this comic yet - this is a "live-blog" kind of situation, even though I may edit it later. I know about the BIG THING that happens in this (thanks, Internet!) and I know about the other BIG THING (thanks, Internet!), but I have no idea how they play out. This is just me, sitting at a computer, listening to some tunes (currently, James's Le Petit Mort), reacting to each page as it comes. So much fun! Second, because this is literally a page-by-page recount of what happens in this comic, I will SPOIL the shit out of it. I assume you're only reading if you don't care what happens or you've already read it and want to react with me. S'alright? S'alright. Let's do this thing! (Oh, yeah, you can probably expect lots of swearing in this post. I'm not wearing my "quasi-professional reviewer" hat for this post, I'm wearing my "irrational fanboy" hat. Deal with it.) (Oh, and I split the post up into three different pages. It's just that long! So be aware of that, too. So many things to be aware of!)

Page 1: NINE-PANEL GRID!!!! In the words of Travis Pelkie, "Portentous!" (It's true, he totally uses that word all the time. I never do.) The entire page shows a watch and its inner workings, with gears and shit like that. The time is 4.52 or thereabouts. I have no idea if that's significant. The narration boxes are yellow with red borders. Who could it be?!?!?!? Because the first creator listed on the cover is "Johns," you can probably assume the narration is about fathers and sons. Jesus, Geoff, we fucking get it. Apparently the narrator's uncle (ooh, swerve!) gave him a watch when he graduated from high school, which had belonged to his father, and his father, and back through generations. Every DC character's family came over on the Mayflower, don't you know, so they can trace their families back over hundreds of years instead of hitting a brick wall a century back when their families immigrated from Eastern Europe and had their names changed or some shit like that. Anyway, there was an inscription on the back that read "Every second is a gift," because the narrator's uncle was an optimist, as was the narrator. Until the watch broke and the narrator lost it. This was, apparently, so traumatic an event that it changed the narrator from an optimist to a pessimist. Really? I mean, it's a watch. A pretty crappy looking watch, from what we see of it in Panel 1. My wife got me a super-duper awesome Spider-Man watch some years ago, and I lost it, and it didn't ruin my life. DC characters are such drama queens. But wait! According to the narrator, he (it's always a "he") "lost time." "Everyone did," according to the final narration box on the page. Hmmm. I have a feeling we're not talking about a shitty watch anymore.

Pages 2-3: Jesus, there's a lot of narration on these pages. There's the typical long shot of the Earth in Panel 1, and then we zoom in to continents, and then a lightning bolt, and finally, in Panel 4, a city. On Page 3, we end up outside Wayne Manor and then, in the final panel on the page, inside the Batcave. A very clichéd way to get into the story, but it's a superhero comic that acts like a movie - originality is not really on the table. Anyway, the narration! The narrator loves the world, but there's "something missing." The narrator bemoans his lack of a good family growing up - his dad was to busy getting rich to worry about raising his son (maybe there were planes to catch and bills to pay, or something like that that would sound good over some wistful music), his mother was too busy worrying about what other people thought of her, and he had no siblings and no real friends. Then he met his hero and became a part of something bigger, which made his life just groovy. In case you can't guess, it was then "ripped away." So sad! Then the narrator stops spouting bullshit and gets down to the nitty-gritty - he's been lost outside reality before, but he was always able to get home because he had a chick. But now he can't find her, so he's been trying to find someone else, and he ends up ... in the Batcave? He thinks Bruce can help him. Bruce, as is his wont, is chillaxing in front of the tube, which is telling us that Superman has disappeared. Oh dear. I do hope he's okay.

Pages 4-5: Alfred is on some sort of communicator, telling Bats that the Joker is loose. Batman already knows, as he was already apprehended and is on his way to Arkham Asylum. Alfred is confused, because that means there are two Jokers. According to Batman, however, there are THREE MOTHERFUCKING JOKERS!!!!! "The chair" told Batman there were three, but he doesn't know what that means. It appears that the three Jokers are Dick Sprang Joker [I guess it's Jerry Robinson Joker, although to me, it looks more Sprang-ish], Brian Bolland Joker, and Greg Capullo Joker. Won't that be fun?

Meanwhile, the narrator is back to spouting crap about bats being able to see really well (why do superheroes always know trivia that relates directly to what is happening on the page?) and that's why Bruce might be able to "see" what's going on with the narrator. Um, the narrator knows that Bruce isn't really a fucking bat, right? According to the narrator, when Darkseid died, "reality flickered" and whatever was keeping him out didn't keep him out for an instant, and he was able to get back in, even though making contact might kill him. So a lightning bolt zaps through the cave and knocks Bats down. The narrator, I assume, shouts "Bruce!"

Page 6: Hey, a full-page splash of Wally West striking a dramatic pose! He says he's the fastest man alive but no one remembers him. He tells Bruce he needs his help.

Page 7: Bats thinks it's Barry, but Wally disabuses him of that notion. Bruce doesn't remember him, but Wally says he knows him, even though "we" are all younger than he would have remembered. Before he can spit out his name, however, he gets zapped by lightning and gets "reeled back" because the connection isn't strong enough. Damn.

Page 8: Wally is still not gone, so he gets to tell Bruce to remember the letter he got from his father (fucking fathers again!), which is how it all started, and that he should ask Barry about it. He narrates that if you tap into the speed force, there are dangers of getting sucked in too far, which kills your sense of self. So time "rips open" as Wally falls back into the speed force, and I don't think you'll be shocked to know we see the Waynes getting gunned down again. It's a comic with Batman in it - of course we have to be reminded how his parents died!!!! Apparently, when Wally falls back into the speed force, "reality from across existence spills out." O ... kay.

Page 9: Bats is alone in the cave, looking at the letter from his father, which is ... floating? in the air in front of him? Wally, meanwhile, is sad because Bruce couldn't save him, so he decides to warn his friends ... "before it's too late"! Dum-dum-dummmmmmm!!!!

Pages 10-12: So much narration! Wally says he relives his life, or, importantly, his "life as it was before the Flashpoint hit." Aunt Iris took him to Central City, where he met Barry Allen, got his powers in the exact same way that Barry did, and became Barry's sidekick. Did Barry "subconsciously" draw down the speed force to zap Wally? That kind of seems like a dick move, if true. I mean, let's douse this kid in chemicals and hit him with lightning in the hope that he won't, you know, die but instead get speed powers just because I'm, I don't know, bored? Lonely? Interested in fucking up some kid's life? Anyway ...

Wally digs being Flash Sidekick, and we see his friends in the Titans, but then the first Crisis happens, and Barry dies. So sad! Wally becomes the Flash, falls in love with Linda Park, and then gets all happy because Barry comes back to life. Yeah. There's a shitload of info-dumping in this comic so far. Damn.

Page 13: Anyway, Barry decides to fuck with the space-time continuum and save his mother's life, which he did, but in so doing, he created a "Flashpoint" - a "powerful and devastating 'butterfly effect" that "resulted in a complete rewriting of reality." Barry and Thomas Wayne saved the universe, which was nice of them, but "someone outside of time" was watching, and as history was "coming back together," this being attacked. According to Wally, as the time lines reformed, this being stole ten years from some heroes. "Bonds between them became weakened and erased" and heroes who had been experienced became beginners and their legacies erased. "A darkness from somewhere has infected us," narrates Wally, and he's the only one who knows about it. The layout of this page is pretty keen. Panels 3 and 5 are on the right side of the page, and a jagged lightning bolt rips across them, angling down to Panel 6, which is in the bottom tier in the lower left. A black hand reaches through the lightning and, in Panel 7, obscures almost the entire panel. It's neat.

Page 14: Wally falls through four panels until he's just a tiny dot, but does that stop him from narrating? Hells no!!!! He says that the Flashpoint didn't change the universe, someone else did, and he has to stop them before another attack. He just has to warn everyone! And with that, "Chapter 1: Lost" comes to an end. Oh dear.

(Phew. New music: Synthetica by Metric. Moving on!)

Page 15: We're in a stereotypical comic-booky/pop culture-y old folks' home, with douchebag and abusive orderlies bossing the elderly around. An old man is trying to leave, but the douchebag orderlies grab him and try to drag him back to his room. He flees into the kitchen and tries to hide. Wally is still fucking narrating, and he says that he wasn't sure why he was drawn to the old man, until he realizes he's connected to the speed force, too. Oh, snap!

Pages 16-17: Wally appears to the man, narrating that he claims that he was once part of a team of mystery men in World War II. Unfortunately, everyone thought he was crazy, so he's been locked up. Wally tells him that his friends weren't completely lost, and the old man apologizes for, it seems, selling out his friends to Joseph McCarthy. Wally tells him that the world is going to need his friends, so he, "Johnny," should "use the genie" to find the Justice Society. The old man says that's the only thing he's been trying to do right before the orderly breaks down the door. Wally is sucked back into the speed force, Johnny tries to call up the thunderbolt, and the orderlies drag him away. Wally still needs help!

Pages 18-19: Wally feels a connection to someone else outside of time, so he tries to reach them, but he can't. We cut to a scene in a police station, where a cop is talking to her captain. They're interrogating someone, but it's not going well. The cop says that the suspect won't tell say her name because it's too dangerous for them to know, and that she's under arrest for stealing a sandwich (or sammich), which is a misunderstanding because where she comes from, food is free. In a flashback, we see the suspect asking to talk to Superman because they're friends. The cop tells her that Superman is missing and might be dead, but that doesn't faze the suspect, who says she'll wait. Plus, she's smiling because she says everything is going to be all right because she can see the future. The cop tells "Captain Sawyer" that the only thing the suspect had on her was a Legion flight ring (although, of course, she doesn't know it's a Legion flight ring - it just looks like a ring to her). Hmmmm ...

Pages 20-24: I don't know if Wally is seeing these scenes, even though he's still fucking narrating, but we move on to a college, where Professor Palmer has cancelled class once again. An old, fat, grumpy woman is berating "Mr. Choi" about it, telling him to go find his boss before she deports him back to Hong Kong. It's funny because ignoring your responsibilities is okay if your boss is racist! Choi (his first name is "Ryan") knocks on Palmer's door, telling him that it's important, and when he sees mail piling up under the door, he decides to use his key to enter the lab. There's a weird machine in there, and someone yells "Ryan!" on the final panel of Page 21. Ryan turns and sees a television screen with Palmer on it, telling him that if he's receiving the message, he, Palmer, is in big trouble (he probably got involved with billiard-playing hooligans). Palmer exposits that he detected a disruption in time, so he put on his fancy Atom suit and went investigating. He shrunk "beyond the atomic" and discovered the "microverse" (let's hope he didn't find any Micronauts). He tells Ryan he won't be back for a while, and that Jean's alimony check will be late. He also tells Ryan that he left him a shrinking belt that he can use to find Palmer in the microverse. He won't only be saving Palmer, but the entire universe. Then, because someone was watching too much Brad Pitt in Ocean's Eleven, he tells Ryan that he'll meet someone in the microverse, but he should not ... and then Palmer gets cut off. Bwah-ha-ha-ha! Ryan looks around and sees the shrinking belt. He has things to do!

Pages 25-26: In case you haven't guessed, Wally is still fucking narrating, as we check in on ... Ted Kord! He's chatting with "Jaime" about how cool being the Blue Beetle could be. Jaime has a "scarab" in his back, and he wanted Ted's help in prying it off of him, but Ted just wants to play superhero. Ted even built a giant flying bug! Jaime is about to leave, but then his back begins sparking. What the heck? He suddenly grows an entire outfit and flies off. And he doesn't want to be a superhero? Anyway, Ted thinks it's way cool, but he doesn't have time to do much else, because suddenly Dr. Fate shows up. He tells Ted that Jaime has been fused to something both he and Ted misunderstand. Ted thinks the scarab is extra-terrestrial, but it ain't - it's magic. That doesn't seem to deter Ted.

Page 27: Wally tells us that there are "new heroes with new ideas" and other such crap, and we zip through them. It appears Damian Wayne is celebrating his 13th birthday alone, and he digs it (he's smiling really creepily). There's a chick Green Lantern [It's Jessica Cruz, but I don't know who she is] who appears to be making a sammich while she's talking to Hal Jordan, and she wants to know who Sinestro is. There's a black kid named Jackson [Aqualad, I guess] whose mother is telling him that he's unnatural because he's gay. Nice. He says he doesn't even know who he is, and the implication is that he's some kind of "Aqua-man" - he swims well and he's sitting in front of an aquarium. But I have no idea [See above]. Finally, a person in a cape and hood runs through the snow as Wally narrates that the images suddenly stop.

Page 28: The figure running through the snow is Pandora, the famous entity from the "New 52" books. She's talking to someone, saying that "this" won't hide what they've done and that it's been her burden and curse. She says that the thing she's talking to believes in skepticism, doubt, and corruption, but it can't handle hope. The heroes' hope, devotion, and love for one another will defeat it. Then she explodes. So Pandora was wildly unimportant in the grand scheme of things, I guess? It's the end of Chapter 2: Legacy. Let's keep going!

(More new music: Going old school with Paul's Boutique.)

Page 29: Wally says he hears a scream, but he's not sure where it comes from. He ends up looking at an island, where a woman streaked with red paint (I don't think it's blood, although it certainly could be) is talking about Diana's brother. Diana's mother told the woman about Diana's twin brother, whose name is Jason. The woman is telling this to a baby, whom she calls Darkseid. O ... kay.

Pages 30-31: In the grand tradition of DC comics, we get a double-page splash of ... heroes standing around. I kid you not! Wally says that he's pretty sure Superman has died, but he "can't see him clearly for some reason." A bunch of DC superheroes are standing around a large puff of red smoke in a field. Ambulances and police cars are in the background, FBI guys wander around, and, I can't stress this enough, this is a double-page spread of people standing around being sad. Sigh.

Page 32: Oliver Queen and Dinah Lance are both at the scene, but while they don't know each other, when their eyes meet "they feel a spark that neither one of them can explain." They don't sleep well because they feel like they've lost something.

Page 33: We're at the "Siegel Motel," and Lois and Clark and their son, Jon, is watching the news about Superman's death. Clark exposits that they came from a parallel world and events are repeating themselves, as Doomsday killed this Clark and now Superman is dead, too. As he walks down the corridor, someone says "Clark?"

Page 34: A weird dude wearing a green cloak and hood stands there, and he knows Clark even though Clark doesn't know him. He tells Clark to call him "Mr. Oz," which, okay, and that Clark, Lois, and the dead Superman are not what they believe they are. Then he disappears. Hey, thanks, pal! Wally is back as we shift to Aquaman and Mera at the bottom of the page, which leads to ...

Pages 35-36: Aquaman flies out of the water, and when Mera catches up to him, she finds he's prepared dinner on the beach. It's where they first met, when Mera ... tried to kill him. Ah, memories! Wally suddenly realizes that it wasn't ten years that was stolen from them, it was love. Awwww! Aquaman proposes to Mera, and Wally thinks that that's exactly what he needs. He needs Linda! Um, we already knew that, Wallster.

Pages 37-39: Linda is at the site of Superman's death, where she's reporting for "Super News," a website that the cop has never heard of. She tries to get a statement, but the cop is having none of it. Wally moons after Linda, because she's so f-o-x-y. She's on the phone with presumably her boss, begging for another chance because she needs the job - her mom's house in in foreclosure (how's that her problem?) and she had student loans and shit. And then it starts raining. Wally narrates that if anyone can remember him, it's Linda, and together they'll warn the world. He manages to zap right in front of her and say that he's back. I have, I swear, not turned the page yet, but who wants to bet that Linda won't remember him? Anyone? ANYONE? All right, let's go ...

Pages 40-41: Wally reaches out to her, saying if she takes his hand he can come home, and that he loves her very much. She says she doesn't know him. Oh, come on - I could write this!

Page 42: Wally gets the super-feels and gets sucked back into the speed force, screaming to her to remember him, but he disappears. It's the end of Chapter 3: Love!

Pages 43-44: As Wally once again falls through the speed force and whines about trying to reconnect with Linda, we see two other panels, one of two heroes in deep shadow looking at the Bat-signal while the man tells the woman it's not for them ... yet. I don't know who they are. I assume someone does. [I guess they're "Gotham" and "Gotham Girl," who are soon showing up in Batman. Gotham and Gotham Girl? Really?] In another panel, Swamp Thing tells John Constantine that the price for his help against "the capes" is Abby, even though Constantine tells him that Abby is "lost to the dark side." Does that mean she's an evil Jedi? That would be cool. Wally continues to spiral, and we see Captain Boomerang yelling to Amanda Waller to get him out of his cell, then Cyborg and Dick Grayson looking around as he calls out to them, even though they obviously can't see anything. As Wally's body begins to break down, he sees "him."

Pages 45-46: The "him" is Wally West, a different Wally West - the Flash's cousin, apparently. It seems that Wally's father had a brother and a sister, Daniel and Iris. His father and Daniel both named their sons after their great-grandfather, because that's not confusing. Wally says he was "as close to Iris as he was far from Daniel." If so, why did Daniel give him the damned watch that we saw on Page 1 instead of giving it to, you know, his own son? Jeebus. Anyway, Wally can tell that this Wally (who's black, because of the television series, presumably) is also a speedster, and we see him save a girl's life. Wally (the white one) feels pretty good about letting go if there's another Wally out there being a superhero. So he lets himself get pulled toward someone else ...

Page 47: Barry Allen, of course. Barry is, not surprisingly, the greatest guy in the world (because Geoff Johns likes him, and Geoff Johns is writing this), and Wally thinks he can die in peace because Barry is so awesome. But before the page turn, Barry gives a side-eye, which, I assume, means he can sense Wally. Let's turn the page and see if I'm right!

Pages 48-49: Wally manifests in front of Barry, tells him that he won't remember who he (Wally) is, and says good-bye. He tells Barry to find Batman and ask him about the letter, because someone has infected history and that will somehow help. He then thanks Barry for an amazing life as he begins to disintegrate, and doesn't he look like Alfred E. Neuman on the left there?

Pages 50-53: Wally is still talking, because he just won't shut the fuck up. He disintegrates for three whole pages, telling Barry that he was right and "every second was a gift," but right before he finally gives up the ghost, Barry says "Wally?" and grabs his arm. He pulls him right the fuck out of the speed force, because Barry is the TOTES BESTEST EVAH!!!!! But then he apologizes? Why? Beats me, but I sense a full-page splash of them embracing on Page 54. Let's see!

Page 54: BOOM! Okay, it's not quite a full-page splash, but it's a three-quarters-of-a-page splash, which two smaller panels showing them smiling at each other at the bottom. In Panel 1, Barry's butt is huge. Plus, his package is fairly prominent. What a weird scene.

Pages 55-56: Barry says he remembers everything now, and he says that Wally disappeared with the rest of the Teen Titans. Wally says that's not the only thing he forgot, and there was a lot more. Wally says he didn't actually disappear with the Titans, but it's getting harder for him to remember. He tells Barry about the Flashpoint (which I thought Barry remembered, but it's been five years since I read Flashpoint), and reassures Barry that it wasn't his fault - it was someone else's.

Page 57: We're back in the Batcave, and Wally is narrating that whoever did it, they had a reason - they took years from the heroes to weaken them. We see Batman walking through the cave.

Pages 58-59: Batman is strolling around looking at things, like the giant Joker playing card. Barry and Wally talk about who could have done it - they reject "Thawne" because whoever did it is more powerful than that, more powerful than Darkseid. On Page 59, we get a NINE-PANEL GRID again, as Batman looks at the letter from his dad (which is not floating around, like I thought, but preserved in a glass case) and sees something shiny in a hole in the cave. Wally says that there's going to be a war between "hope and despair, love and apathy, faith and disbelief." He says he couldn't see who they were, and they're waiting to attack again.

Page 60: It's a full-page splash! Batman has dug into the side of the cave and pulled out ... a smiley-face button with blood on it, as Wally narrates, "We're being watched." Oh dear. It's the end of Chapter 4: Life!

Page 62 (61 is all black, not unlike Smell the Glove): It's the epilogue! It's a full-page splash of Earth!

Page 63: In four panels, we pull back from Earth and end up on Mars. Something is shining in the dirt in the final panel.

Page 64: Damn, it's a watch. It's Wally's watch from Page 1! It gets disassembled and then reassembled in the space of nine panels!

Page 65: The watch starts ticking backward from 4.52! In Panel 4 (the final panel on the page), it turns from a watch into a yellow clock face! Two different narration boxes have a conversation about nothing ever ending that sounds vaguely familiar!

Page 66: The yellow clock face has only four numerals on it - XII, XI, X, and IX! The clock is at 11.45! There's a familiar blood smear on it!!!!!! The name of the story is "The Clock is Ticking Across the DC Universe!"!!!!! The rest of this "80-page" comic is taken up by advertisements for the various new series!!!! Holy fucking shit!!!!!

Well. Sigh. That was disappointing. I mean, I knew about the Watchmen thing, and I knew about the three Jokers thing, but somehow, this book still manages to be boring. I wanted it to be batshit insane, but it's just another example of Johns's tepid writing, lack of bold ideas (no, introducing the characters from Watchmen into the DC Universe doesn't count), and dull themes about fathers and sons (women never seem all the important in Johns's comics except as love interests or maternal figures for the heroic men, which is why Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E. is still probably the best thing I've ever read by him, because he was forced to do something a little different). Nobody gets decapitated or loses any other body parts, though, so ... score?

Anyway, this is dumb. Like a lot of DC's "big event" comics over the past several years (let's say, since ... 2004), it's mostly an advertisement for other comics. Wally zips around, checking on various characters just so we can get caught up on their statuses quo, and he plonks Superman's death right down in the middle of it for some emotional impact, but does anyone really care about Superman's death? I mean, DC (and, to be fair, Marvel) like to rush into emotional events so quickly now, ignoring the fact that readers really ought to have an emotional connection to those characters before bad things happen to them. Barry Allen's death in Crisis was emotional (I guess; I wasn't reading comics then) because he had been around for 30 years, and people had grown up with him. The same thing applies to OG Superman's death, Hal Jordan's fall from grace, and Batman's disabling and any of the other things that happened to DC's superheroes in the 1980s and 1990s. This Superman has been around for five years, and nobody seems to care about him as much as they did OG Superman. Yes, OG Superman was "new" after Crisis, but nobody really believed that - he was the same dude who had been around since 1938, no matter what John Byrne and DC told us. But Superman's death isn't the central issue of Rebirth, it's just something that happens. It's just something that Johns is using to try to get us to connect emotionally to the material.

The problem, ultimately, with Rebirth is that it's not a story. It's a manifesto. And a stupid one at that. I've written this before (much like DC and Marvel constantly recycle material, so do when I write about DC and Marvel!), but it's still true: If you want to bring "hope and love and faith" back into your superhero comics, don't write a fucking story about it, just fucking do it. DC has made motions toward doing this a few times in the past dozen years, but soon enough, Geoff Johns chops off someone's arm or Tony Daniel carves the Joker's face off, and we're back to horror comics masquerading as superhero stories. Johns claims he's not going to write comics for a while after this. As popular as he is, we should all be so lucky.

The worst part about Johns claiming he wants to restore hope to the DCU is that he and his partner in crime, Dan DiDio, were responsible for most of the despair in the DCU in the first place. Yes, it's widely accepted that superhero comics got dark when Frank Miller decided to turn his less-than-subtle political eye toward Clint Eastwood-in-Gran Torino Batman, but there have been degrees of darkness - even Batman could still inspire hope as much as he could drag you into the depths of despair. DC published quite a few series in the late 1980s and 1990s that weren't steeped in darkness, so it was more a question of individual creators deciding to do something like it rather than the entire publishing concern. Even today, DC publishes comics that are lighter-hearted - Batgirl and Gotham Academy come to mind - but the overall tone of the line has shifted since DiDio took over in 2002/2004 (he was VP of Editorial in 2002 and VP/Exec Editor in 2004). It began with Identity Crisis, which I still argue could have been a pretty good murder mystery if not for the retroactive rape of Sue Dibny (which had very little to do with the actual murder mystery) or, alternately, had it not starred DC's icons. Abhay Khosla eviscerated DiDio in this post, so I'm not going to go into all of DiDio's sins, but I do think you can make the case that the overall darkening of the DC Universe is specifically his and Johns's fault. People say I don't give Geoff Johns a fair shake because I haven't read enough of his work, and fair enough, but in the past decade or so, whenever I picked up a random Geoff Johns comic, someone died horribly, by dismemberment or something else awful. These were random Johns comics, not ones that I chose simply because someone on the Internet said there were dismemberments. So while Johns insists that this isn't necessarily going to be a shiny happy DC Universe (and that's fine, too, as long as the comics are good), it's a bit disingenuous of him to decry the direction of the DC Universe over the past dozen years when he was its primary architect, at least on the writing side.

The Watchmen thing is horrible, too. Look, I get it: Watchmen doesn't belong to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons and John Higgins, it belongs to DC. However douchey DC acted with regard to it and however idiotic you want to say Moore was for not reading the contract, it's clear that it's not a creator-owned book and therefore DC can do whatever the hell they want with it. After deciding already to shit all over it a few years ago (and backing dump trucks full of money up to creators' houses, creators who would probably get very peeved if their creations were used against their will and probably would argue that, despite not being officially "creator-owned," the characters in Watchmen were as close as possible to it), it's not a stretch to think they'd use the characters again (honestly, this comic should have been called DC Universe: Rebirth: Fuck Alan Moore). But the way they use Dr. Manhattan as the "villain" is absolutely idiotic. Johns talks about it here:

I needed a character who would embody a disconnect from a sense of optimism and hope, and somebody who manipulated time, and it was right there. You have a — I don't call him a villain, he's barely an antagonist, but he's an entity, a being who looked at the DC Universe and tested it, removed this time from it for reasons that are to be revealed later, but almost to study it. I know it was risky, but we need to take some risks. Let's take the risk! If I was going to go into this and try, I wanted to try big.

The problem with this is that it's a fundamental misreading of Watchmen. I mean, it's not surprising, as comic book companies have taken the wrong lessons for The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen for decades, but Johns seems to imply that Dr. Manhattan created parts of the DC Universe after the end of Watchmen, as we all remember his conversation with Adrian Veidt about going off and creating some life of his own. But at the end of Watchmen, Dr. Manhattan was not someone with a "disconnect from a sense of optimism and hope," he was extremely hopeful. His entire arc is about how he learned how precious life is and that it must be treated as the miracle it is. The only reason he went along with Veidt's plan is because he weighed the options of thousands dead versus billions dead and chose the lesser of two evils. That doesn't make him disconnected from optimism and hope, it makes him a complex being capable of making difficult decisions ... something fairly anathema to regular superhero stories. He didn't sacrifice everyone on Earth because he was hopeful that things could work out. Johns and DiDio (I assume DiDio had some input into using Dr. Manhattan) are completely wrong about Dr. Manhattan. It's like saying that Dracula doesn't come out during the day because he doesn't want to use the air conditioning. It's a fundamental misreading of the entire character. Obviously, this is a serial comics world, so there are "reasons ... to be revealed later" about what's going on, but from that interview, it does sound like Johns has no idea what Dr. Manhattan is. It's like Ted Cruz listing Rorschach as one of his favorite superheroes. Did Geoff Johns even read Watchmen?

So this is a comic. It looks nice, as we get art by Gary Frank, Ethan van Sciver, Ivan Reis, and Phil Jimenez penciling; Frank, van Sciver, Joe Prado, Reis, and Matt Santorelli inking; and Brad Anderson, Jason Wright, Hi-Fi, and Gabe Eltaeb coloring. But, like so many mainstream superhero comics these days, it's pretty but sterile - the page layouts are dull, the characters are all perfectly muscled and coiffed, and the coloring sands off any sharp edges. Whenever DC (or Marvel, for that matter) wants to do one of these big event comics, they get good artists who will not push the boundaries one little bit - that's not the point of these things at all. So it's pretty enough, I suppose.

Rebirth is, ultimately, a comic that doesn't need to exist. That's what's so frustrating about it. In the Johns interview, he says:

I spent hours in there listing out all the things I love about DC and the things that I thought were not in the books right now. I sat down and I read everything, and I thought, I don't feel any sense of history, legacy, hope, optimism, a cohesive universe — and by that, I don't mean crossovers every week — emotional bonds was a huge one. Over the years, some of this stuff had been lost. Not just characters, but smaller things too, tonal things that are really hard to nail.

If we ignore that, once again, Johns was a big reason why this stuff was lost in the first place, we see that what he's talking about takes years to create. It wasn't in DC comics, for the most part, for decades, until writers began, in the 1970s, to make connections and such. Post-Crisis, it took years again to build that stuff up. I'm not defending the New 52, which I thought was a terrible idea in the first place, but it was only in existence for 5 years, and the things that Johns is talking about take time and a commitment to creating those bonds. Johns was writing a lot of DCnU books - didn't he think to ease back on the non-stop action in Justice League once or twice and maybe devote an entire issue to the team sitting around and playing Yahtzee? He yearns for comics like he read when he was kids, and who doesn't, but I've often made this point about, say, the X-Men (perhaps the greatest "family" ever created in comics) - Marvel left Claremont alone because the X-Men didn't sell well when he started, but they let him grow the franchise over sixteen fucking years, so by the time he was unceremoniously dumped, the bonds between X-Men felt real because he had developed them so well. After his first five years, he had just killed Jean Grey. A good start, as he had done a good job developing the characters to that point, but he still went another decade and made them more like a family. Johns, like a lot of current people in charge at DC and Marvel, want to create these "bonds" inorganically, by force, and that's not how you do it. But because sales are in the toilet, there's no patience for marginal titles anymore (not that there was too much in the past, but "marginal" titles back then sold more than best-sellers today, so the cancellation axe was a bit slower to fall), so there's no place for character development. The best characters in comics these days are not at DC and Marvel, they're at Image or Dark Horse or IDW or Oni or other smaller publishers. That's just the way it is. If Johns and DiDio want to bring back those bonds, they have to commit to it in the monthly comics, not put a big emotional scene between Wally and Barry in the middle of their event comic. We shall see if they have the patience for that.

This is, of course, just my opinion. Yes, it's like an asshole in that everyone has one and it stinks, but still. As usual, I don't have an axe to grind with regard to DC. My favorite comic book character is Batman, and some of my favorite comics of all time are DC comics. This kind of thing is just tiring, and even though I know I'm not the audience for DC anymore, I live in hope that I will want to be their audience at some point. Hey, maybe they could do an event comic about their fans sitting around hoping the next page doesn't feature someone getting their arm chopped off ...? I'd totally read that.