Warning: It’s been awhile since I’ve blogged about comics here. Reading this post over, it sounds ridiculous and maybe makes no sense, which is emblematic of the hobby as a whole, really. Read at your own risk.
Because comics, both as an industry and as a hobby, is an all-devouring and self-consuming nostalgia engine, it is not shocking that 2009 saw the launch of a revival of a niche book from the mid-90s in the form of Tony Bedard’s R.E.B.E.L.S.
Bedard, who is one of those really capable comics scribes who people don’t notice (despite his excellent work for CrossGen before becoming DC’s resident fill-in/random miniseries guy), manages to make R.E.B.E.L.S. work as both a reinvigoration of the cosmic side of DC’s universe (something that started with Andy Diggle’s awesome Adam Strange series a few years back but then got shunted off to Jim Starlin, whose work has felt dated and a bit phoned in of late) and as a continuation of the story established by Keith Giffen and Tom Peyer in the franchise’s various iterations (the book started as L.E.G.I.O.N. and switched titles when the title organization got co-opted by Brainiac II’s malevolent super-genius son and B-dub et al became, well, rebels). The roster has enough returning characters to make it familiar, enough new characters to make it interesting, and actual ties to the Legion of Superheroes (via a clever and amusing time travel contrivance) instead of the winking “hey, this is like a 20th century version of the LSH, huh?” thing the previous version of the series did.
As a relaunch of a concept that isn’t necessarily old enough to have the right level of nostalgia, the book has been critically lauded but shaky sales-wise, which means it’s basically the next book that DC is going to cancel and then replace with Magog Team-Up or Zatanna’s Pajama Party. This is especially likely because DC editorial is very vocal about their support of the book.
I’m guilty here, too, because I’d ignored R.E.B.E.L.S. for most of the year, even though my comics guy kept telling me it was his favorite DC book, ie the only DC book he read. But a few weeks ago, I picked up the whole series to date on a whim because it was a light Wednesday. The praise the title receives? Totally justified, but it’s definitely, as I said above, aimed at a certain type of fan. With a pair of Blackest Night tie ins coming up, it might be a good jumping-on point.
For some reason, this reminds me that my pull list today looks drastically different than it did a year ago. Maybe a post on that later.
