“When the latest issue of Justice League is released on Wednesday by DC Comics, it will be scrutinized like no other installment in the 76-year history of that publisher of superhero adventures.
Some readers may be drawn in by its cover depicting revised incarnations of Superman and Batman, or a story line that tells of a tense first meeting between these costumed characters before they became allies.
But DC is betting that more potential customers will be attracted by an insignia that boldly declares this to be issue No. 1 of Justice League; never mind the hundreds of chapters that came before it.
Starting on Wednesday, the publisher is resetting all 52 of its continuing series, including venerable titles like Action Comics and Detective Comics that introduced Superman and Batman in the 1930s, at issue No. 1, and using the opportunity to revise or jettison decades of continuity in the heroes’ fictional lives…
…Henry Jenkins, the provost’s professor of communication, journalism and cinematic arts at the University of Southern California, said the idea of returning classic heroes to their origins long predated comic books.
Part of the nature of culture is that we retell stories that are meaningful to us, again and again, in different ways,” Mr. Jenkins said, pointing to Homer’s “Iliad,” Virgil’s “Aeneid” and Dante’s “Inferno” as “continual reboots of Greek mythology.” […]    –Dave Itzkoff, The New York Times, August 30, 2011