Tell me if you’ve heard this one before.

DC canceled four books on Monday, including two of the original New 52 in Demon Knights and Legion of Super Heroes, a second wave book in Dial H, and a relatively new book in fourth waver Threshold. All four were struggling in sales. All four will be gone in just a few short months.t

It’s a story that’s been told a number of times since the launch of the New 52, the proposed savior of DC Comics, an endeavor that was so huge and all-encompassing, it was perceived as a boom or bust type situation. Little did we know it wasn’t that as much as it would be something that would encase the entire universe in some sort of mediocrity carbonite.

There are a number of reasons why, but chief among them, at least to me, is the company enslaving itself to the New 52 concept. Granted, now we’re down below 52 titles, with at least four books gone and nothing on the horizon to replace them, but the constant attempts to keep their title count at this arbitrarily decided number of 52 (one of historic value for DC, but still, it serves no obvious story purpose or reason) have created a universe of the Justice League and a whole lot of flotsam and jetsam.

From the start, they loaded their release list with a few guaranteed hits, titles that were destined to, at best, find a bit of critical acclaim and a moderate fanbase, and books that were dead on arrival. Anyone and everyone knew from the start that books like Legion Lost and Hawk and Dove never truly stood a chance, yet there DC was, filling up the inventory with books of that sort to make 52.

Then, books were canceled and more waves came, with some successes but even more sure to be canceled titles arriving. Books like G.I. Combat and The Ravagers met quick, quiet demises, with no one clamoring to keep the stories of haunted tanks and not quite Gen 13 but still sort of Gen 13 going.

They were filling space, just to fill space. Ultimately, the best answer was and is to reduce the number of books they are publishing, but that has yet to appear to be something they are interested in doing. By filling out the New 52 with subpar creative teams on books with very niche audiences (even for comics), you instantaneously marginalize them and make them creatively suspect and commercially frozen.

At least DC has seemingly gotten smart and started replacing all of the canceled books with books that have a higher likelihood of success. Basically, what they realized is this: they need Batman and Superman to prop up their universe, otherwise the whole thing won’t survive. That’s why books like Superman Unchained and Batman/Superman are coming (the fifth and sixth Superman family books and the fourteenth (!!) Batman book to be on their release list), as DC knows that they are only as strong as their lead characters.

In fact, of the 16 DC Books in the top 50 of the sales chart, half are Batman books, three are Green Lantern books (coming soon, Larfleeze!) and two are Superman, with the other three being Earth 2, Wonder Woman and Flash. Sure, Marvel is top heavy too, but not this badly.

I think this all underlines the other major problem for DC these days: do they have an identity anymore, outside of their big guns?

Redefining the Center of DC’s Universe

I was re-reading Infinite Crisis the other day (still a damn fun read, actually), and it was weird reading it because of how invested in the characters I was. Bart Allen stepping up, Connor Kent sacrificing himself, Jaime Reyes coming up strong, Booster Gold being a mover and a shaker…you name it. That was a story that was all about the universe DC had created and the strength of not being a slave to continuity, but embracing it for the power it had behind it.

In the story, a big part of it is how the center of the universe had shifted from Oa to this tear in the universe where Alexander Luthor was shuffling up the multiverse to create his New Earth (okay, we might be better off if we don’t think too much about the plot), and when I was thinking of where DC is at now, that came back to me.

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What is the center of the DC universe now? I don’t mean in a physical sense or even in the way Oa was, but what defines the DC universe? The once palpable connective tissue that united characters like Donna Troy and Starfire to people like Animal Man and Firestorm is gone. That interconnectivity that makes a comic universe a universe is gone, and with it, a lot of the excitement tied to the lower tier books goes with it.

That’s the thing: books like Batman can survive no matter what. It’s those lower tier books that need the universe to keep them afloat, and with nothing connecting, say, Dial H to Justice League (short of a very brief Flash tie-in), what’s to keep it alive besides the small audience that supports the book itself?

Nothing, which is a shame. Dial H is a book that has an audience, and a fervent one at that (hey Vince!). It would have been better served as a Vertigo book rather than a sacrificial lamb to the New 52 meat grinder. They shoehorned it into the New 52, and with no tangible connection to the rest of the universe, it went away like so many that preceded it.

I’m not saying books like Dial H can’t succeed without a connection to the rest of the universe, though. Dial H is a book that belongs on an island (called Vertigo), but it being forced into the New 52 created sales expectations it could never live up to.

Going back to the question I’ve asked a couple times now, if it hasn’t become obvious, the center of the DC universe is now undoubtedly Gotham City. They’re a company defined by Batman, with even their previous great white hope – Superman – now getting the Batman-esque gritty treatment in the upcoming, admittedly stunning looking “Man of Steel.”

DC tries to unite everyone with events like the artist formerly known as WTF month and the upcoming villains month, desperately grasping at straws to capture even an inkling of fan attention and to recreate the excitement that surrounded books like Infinite Crisis and its follow ups 52 and One Year Later. Instead, they mostly capture attention when they cancel books and when they get themselves into yet another PR nightmare.

But rebuilding the interconnectivity is something you can’t force, no matter how hard they try. That’s something they will, ideally, redevelop over time. The real fix to DC’s problems is hidden in a much more obvious place.

Building a Better Tomorrow

So how can they get back on the right track? Well, they should look at what is working for them right now. The strange thing is, the books that really generate heat are ones that exist outside of the New 52 or ones that do something completely different – focus on the characters.

The “Adventures of Superman” digital comic, for example, has found supporters inside and outside of the industry. Mark Waid, the man who knows more about DC than pretty much anyone, raved about Justin Jordan’s writing on the most recent iteration, and everyone on Twitter was temporarily driven insane over the awesome that was Chris Samnee’s Supes.

A big part of me thinks the torrid love affair with that book is at least partially due to nostalgia. It’s a Superman book that is just what we’ve always come to know and love about Superman books. It’s truth, justice and the American way, and it has deservedly earned a lot of credit for what it is doing. However, short of restarting the universe again to where it was before, they can’t really get back there, but it does highlight something that should be obvious: tell stories that get to the core of the character with great art, and a book will be received well.

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On the other end of the spectrum, this past week brought Ales Kot and Patrick Zircher’s first issue of “Suicide Squad,” and holy crap, what a breath of fresh air that was. It was intense, powerful and completely sucked you in, and it told a story at the scale a concept like Suicide Squad should. It was filled with sharp, biting characterization from Kot and standout art from Zircher, and it is a book that went from “must avoid at all costs” to “damn, that book is coming home with me monthly” in one issue. I was onboard with characters like Harley Quinn, Unknown Soldier and King Shark again, and it just took one issue.

Honestly, it was the first book I have read from DC in a while that felt like it was two creators telling a story they absolutely wanted to tell, and it was the two of them doing what they do best. The connective tissue is already there in the book, as characters like James Gordon, Jr. and Harley Quinn naturally fit in the Batman universe, while someone like Amanda Waller is in deep everywhere in the DCU. Kot and Zircher just made these characters people I wanted to read about, and something that stands out amidst all of the other comics in the industry.

It redefines the book as one where characters and creators are welcome, and that’s the baseline for what DC should be going for in their books.

If I were DC, I’d be finding more exciting creators like Kot and Zircher to revitalize books. It’s not like they aren’t out there. DC has succeeded with taking people like Jeff Lemire, Matt Kindt, Ray Fawkes and Charles Soule and giving them the ability to tell stories that they want, and the books they write are amongst their most buzzed about and critically acclaimed. A big reason why is they get to the core of the characters they are given, and they make them characters you are invested in.

I mean, why not throw a briefcase of money at Landry Q. Walker and Eric Jones and say “go nuts on Teen Titans.”

Maybe they don’t want to work at DC, and that’s fine, but the point is DC needs to arm creators to use their best ideas and not fear being editorialized to the point where they don’t even recognize their work. You can read Suicide Squad and see that Kot and Zircher were able to do the things that they wanted to do, and the results were exemplary.

Trust in your creators with your characters, and the future could be bright. Some character first books, like Wonder Woman and The Flash, have seen DC allow creators to do just that. Use those as the basis for what the whole line should be doing, use Suicide Squad as a basis for what’s next, and just make good – and less – comics.

Because regardless of Oa or Gotham City or whatever, the center of the DC universe always will be the characters, and not just Batman and Superman.