52 Pickup

As anyone who pays any attention to comic books already knows, this month DC Comics relaunched its entire line of comics, restarting them all from number 1. Well, not all: Some titles were discontinued, and a number of new ones are starting that weren’t there before. But in one month, DC is restarting from scratch with 52 new series. Even Detective Comics–which was the longest-running comic published in the United States, introduced Batman and gave the company its name–ended at issue #881 and now starts over. Action Comics, which introduced Superman in its #1 in 1938, similarly goes from issue #904 to square one. So on that level alone, it feels like the end of an era.