DC has a Brand New Idea of how to attract more readers to their comics:
Starting next year, DC Comics will unveil SUPERMAN: EARTH ONE and BATMAN: EARTH ONE, two graphic novels spotlighting the most powerful heroes of the DC Universe, with their first years and earliest moments retold in a standalone, original graphic novel format, on a new earth with an all-new continuity.
If that’s not excitign enough, check out who will be the creative teams (if you can call yet another regurgitated origin story creative):
Return to Smallville and experience the journey of Earth’s greatest adopted son, as he grows from boy to Superman in SUPERMAN: EARTH ONE by J. Michael Straczynski and artist Shane Davis.
Watch from the darkest corners of Crime Alley as a young boy is struck by unbelievable tragedy that will forge the greatest crime-fighter to ever stalk the rooftops of Gotham City in BATMAN: EARTH ONE, by writer Geoff Johns and artist Gary Frank.
If there are any characters who don’t need their origins retold it’s those two and to make it worse the writers involved with it seem to have been chosen for their nerd appeal, rather than their ability to attract new comics readers. I’m sure it will be succesful, but for a “major publishing event” it’s rather lame and incredibly conservative.
For an example of how to succesfully retool a flagging series DC should look to what happened to the venerable Spirou, as old as Batman and Superman and immensily succesful for decades (one of the Big Three B.D. series, together with Tintin and Asterix), especially when Franquin was doing it. The series started dragging when he left, but was revived when the team of Tome & Janry took over in the mid-eighties. They did this without feeling the need to establish a new continuity, go back to the roots or revamp the origins, but just by creating good new stories in a slightly more modern style… So much could be done with both Superman and Batman if DC just let go of the idea that everything needs to be an event and live up to the “mythical” stature of the characters.