DC Rebirth is a 2016 relaunch by the American comic book publisher DC Comics of its entire line of ongoing monthly superhero comic book titles. Using the end of The New 52 (2011–2016) initiative in May 2016 as its launching point, DC Rebirth restored the DC Universe to a form much like that prior to the 2011 "Flashpoint" storyline while still incorporating numerous elements of The New 52, including its continuity. It also saw many of its titles move to a twice-monthly release schedule, along with being released at .
DC Comics ended the Rebirth branding in December 2017, opting to include everything under a larger "DC Universe" banner and naming. The continuity and repercussions established by Rebirth continues into the New Justice (2018–2021), Infinite Frontier (2021–2023), and Dawn of DC (2023) relaunches.
Publication history
DC Universe: Rebirth Special and initiative launch
In January 2016, DC Comics co-publishers Dan DiDio and Jim Lee tweeted an image of a blue curtain with the word "Rebirth" on it, teasing the event's release. The following month, DC announced its Rebirth initiative, a line-wide relaunch of its titles, to begin in June 2016. Beginning with an 80-page one-shot which was released on May 25, 2016, Rebirth returned Action Comics and Detective Comics to their previous numbering (#957 and #934, respectively). It also released all comic titles at the price of , multiple books shifted to a twice-monthly release schedule, a number of existing titles relaunched with new #1s, and several new titles were released.
Geoff Johns, president and CCO of DC Entertainment, described the 80-page one-shot as "re-laying the groundwork for DC's future while celebrating the past and present. It's not about throwing anything away. It's quite the opposite." On the initiative, which was described as a rebirth of the DC Universe, Johns called Rebirth more "in the same vein as Green Lantern: Rebirth and The Flash: Rebirth. Some things alter and change, but it's more character-driven, and it's also more about revealing secrets and mysteries within the DC Universe about "Flashpoint" and The New 52 that are part of a bigger tapestry." The Rebirth initiative would reintroduce concepts from pre-"Flashpoint" continuity that The New 52 had done away with, and build "on everything that's been published since Action Comics #1 up thru The New 52." Lee said that Johns "came up with this brilliant story [for the DC Universe: Rebirth Special] that basically allows us to seat the New 52 within the continuity that preceded it. So it really synchronizes and harmonizes pre-52 with New 52 continuity".
Creative teams for the Rebirth titles, along with some art and storylines, were revealed at WonderCon 2016. Johns worked with each writing team and the editors for the titles to help refocus "on these characters, deconstructing them down to their core DNA and building out story arcs based on that DNA". Additionally, two titles part of the initial announcement in February, Gotham Academy: Second Semester and Earth 2, were revealed to no longer be considered Rebirth titles, instead acting as continuations of their New 52 titles, Gotham Academy and Earth 2: Society, respectively. Regarding the decision to focus on fewer titles, with some shipping twice-monthly, DiDio said, "What we did was eliminate some of the lower ranked titles, and we're trying to incorporate those ideas into the main books themselves, because we feel that makes the main books stronger" adding, "we look at things like... Gotham by Midnight. And I loved Gotham by Midnight, but it never got the sampling that a Batman book would. But if we did that Gotham by Midnight story and integrated it into the Batman series that was shipping twice monthly, there was a better chance for people to see those characters, get excited by those characters, and more importantly, if we ever decided to thin them out, maybe we'd have a stronger audience and a better chance for series like that to succeed." DiDio also revealed that DC had breaks in the schedule "where we'll decide whether or not a double-ship is working" and potentially change it to monthly status. "We're going to be examining that on a regular basis," he added. "We're not going to keep book double-shipping if we don't think the demand is there."
