All Star DC Comics

All Star DC Comics

All Star was an imprint of ongoing comic book titles published by DC Comics that ran from 2005 to 2008. DC has published two titles under the All-Star banner, featuring Batman and Superman.

The premise of the imprint was to partner DC Comics' top tier characters with the most popular and acclaimed writers and artists. The creators had access to all elements in the characters' histories to present their interpretation for a modern audience that have not read these DC characters' comics previously, or had not seen them lately. The creative teams were not beholden to any previous and present continuities, and told stories that featured "the most iconic versions of these characters".

The project had been compared to the Ultimate line of Marvel Comics, which was a successful attempt to re-introduce Marvel's most popular characters to a new generation of readers by presenting new, updated versions unburdened by decades of plotlines. There were several differences between the two imprints, though. While the Ultimate titles have closely interrelated storylines, of the two All-Star series released, there has been no effort to make them conform to each other or indicate they exist in the same continuity. Another is that All-Star did not seek to introduce brand new versions of the characters so much as to present them in unhindered continuity. In short, this meant, although Robin's origin is "rebooted" in this imprint, this was not the case for other All-Star titles or the DC Universe.

Some observers, and DC themselves, had pointed to the return of DC's major film franchises as an impetus for All-Star. "No one can doubt that some kind of continuity shedding is necessary with Superman and Batman coming to the big screens," the website Comicon.com wrote. "Moviegoers entertained by these films would find the current comics storylines impenetrable ".

With the end of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's All-Star Superman and the rebranding of Frank Miller and Jim Lee's All Star Batman and Robin as Dark Knight: Boy Wonder as well as the introduction of the DC: Earth One line of OGNs, the imprint is effectively defunct.