Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in Yellow Springs, Ohio.  This week, Bennett deconstructs the upcoming DC relaunch.

As I wrote in last week's column (see "Confessions of a Comic Book Guy--Heading For Another New Normal") though I read all of the rumors I really didn't think that DC was actually going to relaunch their entire line.  Nobody else seems to have taken the hint but that's what DC wants us to call it, a relaunch, not a "reboot," I’ve double checked and while both terms can be used pretty much interchangeably I can kind of see why the publisher prefers one over the other.  Over the last twenty years superhero reboots have become a pretty common occurrence and this a whole lot bigger than that; the term "game changer" has been indiscriminately tossed about to the point it’s lost most of its meaning.  But this, this is a game changer.

DC assures us that the changes they're making are neither temporary nor cosmetic and there won’t be any take-backs.  And given the amount of press this is being given I'm going to go ahead and assume that there exists the corporate will to devote the necessary amount of time, energy and money to make it a success.  Because it's going to be awfully hard to walk all of this back in a year's time without them looking like complete idiots.

Being human given the investment Time-Warner has undoubtedly committed to this project I have to wonder just how many fail-safes have been installed to make sure it goes off as planned.  For one thing the digital downloads will make these comics available to a brand new audience, one not used to the comic book industry’s rather lackadaisical attitude about ship dates (i.e. "it'll ship when it ships, stop bugging us").  Which is why I was pleased to read over on The Beat that DC co-publishers Dan Didio and Jim Lee have sent out a memo to artists that three finished issues of a title have to be ready by August 31st "or else."  Yes, having known this was going to happen they could have and should have given everyone a lot more lead time but if this is going to have any chance of working at the very least the trains are going to have to run on time.

There's a lot I like about what they're saying.  For example, according to various comic news sites there's an editorial edict that post-relaunch female superheroes will be required to wear more "practical" clothing, in other words more clothing.  You can imagine, given my many comments about the current state of undress of female comic book characters (why, just last week I was whining about Marvel’s new Miss America wearing a thong), how much this pleases me.  Though the change of dress code is undoubtedly at least partially in place to make DC's female superheroes easier to adapt to other media (see the recent Wonder Woman pilot).

Last week I said that I liked what DC was saying about making its comics more diverse (something else on a checklist of problems I have with contemporary comics), which is undoubtedly why Cyborg got the nod to join the Justice League.  In a USA Today piece Geoff Johns called him "the modern-day, 21st-century superhero" which I can kind of see, but I’m guessing the fact a whole generation knows him from the Teen Titans cartoon probably didn't hurt either.

But to be honest I’m actually more excited by the prospect of Mr. Terrific getting his own series, partially because he's on the short list of characters I never thought would ever get one, sure.  But it's also because of the way that he honors the original version of the character, the guy with "Fair Play" on his chest who was working with juvenile delinquents while the rest of the Justice League was off fighting super-villains.

I'm hoping that at least some of that attitude is in the new Mr. Terrific series because in the same USA Today piece Johns talks about how the post-relaunch comics will "also reflect today’s real-world themes and events."  Regular readers of these things know I've frequently complained about how modern superhero are completely lacking in a connection with the real world.  More and more they’ve become about superheroes and the fantastic world they inhabit and less about the people they’re supposed to protect.

So I basically I'm all for the relaunch, though I can understand the attitudes of the retailers who aren't.  There's no question that this is one Jim Dandy jumping off point for a lot of our customers, and you could even make a case that they’re being pushed.  Maybe I'm completely out of touch but given the quality of most of the already announced titles I'm guessing that most of them will stick around for at least the first few issues.

And, ultimately, how can anything that brings the Barbara Gordon Batgirl back to us be bad?

The opinions expressed in this column are solely  those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.