Bringing Back Who's Who

One of the better announcements to come out of DC Comics lately is that they are finally going to publish a new Who's Who starting in May. This is great for a number of reasons.

First, I love me some Who's Who, most of all the original series whose format the new project will probably use. Especially since Didio makes mention of it as still a bible of sorts for writers, and DC has been in 80s revival mode for a while now. Besides, there's no way the loose leaf format of the last Who's Who could include 800 entries. If you're doing the math, that's an average of 44 entries per issue, so I'm guessing 18 48-pagers. Nice and thick! Here's hoping it'll look a lot like the original and not like the Marvel Universe series with its faux-RPG power levels and text-over-art aesthetic.

The second reason to rejoice is that it heralds a more stable era for DC Comics. Didio says: "truth be told, if we ever planned to take on these two monumental projects again, we wanted to make sure we rolled them out at a time we felt that the universe was no longer in flux and the history, as built, and the Who’s Who entries would stay relevant for as long as the original projects." In other words, Blackest Night is the Final Crisis. If the original Who's Who lasted for so long, it's that the DCU didn't suffer a new Crisis every other week and you could (mostly) count on the information found within. And if you couldn't, the pretty pictures! But lately, sheesh. Who can keep it straight? It's one Crisis after another, and we're never even sure what changes stuck or didn't. After Blackest Night, we can hope for a lull in continuity-changing events, hopefully in favor of good stories starring iconic characters.

Here's to 18 months of stability!