The Gimmick and the Gap-Filler

By now even the most casual DC fan must know the tortured history of ... well, of DC history. The streamlining of Crisis on Infinite Earths (1985) begat further corrective streamlining in Zero Hour (1994), which led to the just-imagine! Hypertime expansion in The Kingdom (1998). Now we are back to the Multiverse (sort of) in Infinite Crisis, and staring down the muzzle of "One Year Later."

I like the simple efficiency of the OYL concept. It’s a line-wide brand that exploits the promised aftereffects of a crossover without actually depending on the crossover itself. It also restores a certain degree of mystery to DC’s books, which for the past couple of years have been increasingly devoted to plot mechanics – Arc A sets up Arcs B and C, which dovetail into Arc D, etc. That’s good for driving up Internet chatter and creating anticipation for the next big event, but it’s not a sustainable storytelling model. Because OYL draws a bright line between the chaos surrounding Infinite Crisis (including the recovery chronicled in 52), it signals the end of the big events, before (DC hopes) the reader has gotten tired of them. OYL is a gimmick, to be sure, but in the way that "Zero Month" was a gimmick, and towards the same end.

If there was a certain degree of mystery surrounding the post-Crisis and post-Zero Hour books, it came more from the reader’s uncertainty about just what stories were still relevant. By and large DC treated the answers to these questions as secondary concerns, although it did fill in many gaps with the anthology series Secret Origins (1986-90) and various and sundry backup stories. By the time Hawkman-level continuity crises arose, DC had become acquainted with one Mr. Geoff Johns, and the rest (no pun intended) was history.

52 therefore seems aimed at the same niche. Like the by-now-ubiquitous Secret Files books, it’s more of an adjunct to DC’s main titles; and like Secret Origins, it will contain "History of the DC Universe" features establishing just what happened to whom and when. 52’s most intriguing aspect, though, seems to be its desire to stand alone. If OYL is the gimmick to end all gimmicks, 52 may turn out to be the anti-crossover – a single series which touches on all the others without being dependent on them, or they on it. After a couple of years filled with the mega-epic that was Infinite Crisis, it may be an appropriate tonic for the crossover hangover.