Has anyone else noticed how weird DC has been of late? I regularly find myself saying “WTF” when some piece of news relating to DC drops. In the past month especially everything that’s been announced has just been… well… really odd. Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying that I don’t like at least some of the things they’re trying, but I just keep coming back to how peculiar they’ve been acting. Let’s have a look at some of the DC news from the past few months

I suppose the best place to start with this is one piece of DC news that actually had me say “What the fuck!?”. Not in anger or anything like that, but in pure bewilderment. DC are doing a “WTF Month”. A month where they’re comics will be “WTF certified”. A month where comics will feature a “WTF certified” stamp on the cover. A month where each issue will apparently “leave readers in a state of shock”. DC seems to think that it’s “a symbol of dedication to the retail community and to readers”. It seems to me more like a symbol of dedication to profits and sensational news grabbing headlines at the cost of creative integrity, I may just be a simple country Hyper-chicken, but I know when us fans are being finger licked.The “WTF Month” of course seems to be an attempt to repeat the success of the “Zero Month” which in itself had a bit of a WTF aura about it, although at least the “Zero Month” seemed to serve a purpose, giving us a backstory to these characters in the New 52 but what the fuck is the creative reason for the “WTF month”?

Then of course there’s the whole Gail Simone, writer of Batgirl, being fired and rehired by DC within a two week period. DC must have known that there would be fan backlash to a creator being taken off a book, they also must know that fan backlash like that tends to die down pretty quickly, so just what was their reason for Gail’s termination? It doesn’t make any sense, did that reason change all of a sudden? Then there’s their recent wave of cancellations which include two books that have only had 5 issues and were literally the last 2 books that DC launched! It kinda seems like those creators weren’t even given a chance, like 5 issues is barely enough time to get to know these characters! Of course what’s even weirder then that is two of the books that DC announced to launch when Team 7 and Sword Of Sorcery (those two aforementioned cancelled titles) are cancelled are Justice League Of America’s Vibe and Katana, two little known characters both of whom will be members of the new Justice League Of America and one of which is already in Birds Of Prey. So why the heck give two (almost) completely unknown characters ongoing solo titles when they’re going to be part of team books, when there is an honest to god member of the actual Justice League (Cyborg) that doesn’t have his own book!? Plus characters like Martian Manhunter, which have a huge following who have only shown up as members of teams or in backups!? What?… like what? Then theres the weirdest (and also possibly the best) piece of news out of DC of late. DC are basically integrating Occupy Wallstreet into continuity in a big way, in their next round of book launches they will be launching The Movement and The Green Team. One will focus on superheroes of the 1% and the other on heroes of the 99%. This of course is an interesting concept, but working it into DC continuity seems like a stroke of insanity.  I mean stuff like this is what Vertigo and Image do best! I’ll will be a good little fan and withhold judgement on those books until I actually read them, but that doesn’t stop me wondering about the strangeness of these two books.