So I saw a few days ago where artist Patrick Zircher was advocating a Marvel Universe reboot along the lines of the one DC is doing. And basically I think that’s a stupid, stupid idea.
Case in point–DC has spent the whole summer running from the term “reboot.” They even have a FAQ somewhere where they explain to retailers that it’s not a reboot. They know nobody who was reading the comics before September wants to hear that. All I know is that Superman continuity seems to have been totally jettisoned, so to me that sounds like a Superman reboot. Does that make it a line-wide reboot? Well, if the Superman reboot means that Robin is meeting Superboy for the first time ever in Teen Titans #1, I’d say 99% of Teen Titans stories from the last ten years don’t count anymore, so that sure smells rebooty to me. Shared universes don’t get “a little” rebooted.
The general idea of Zircher’s argument is that Marvel needs more readers, and decades of backstory creates an obstacle preventing new readers from getting into the product. A line-wide reboot, then, has all the series and characters start over fresh at the same time, so that new readers are not “put off by storylines wrapped in 50 years of arcana” and do not have to “read a wiki entry to know what the hell’s going on.” Setting aside personal feelings about Marvel canon, this may sound very appealing. And indeed, I’m always seeing some guy (often in the comments on this very site) proposing a series of reboots, so that every few years everything gets reset, so nothing has time to get old or convoluted.
Here’s the problem: It will never happen.
I’m not saying Marvel won’t ever try a line-wide reboot; I’m just saying Marvel will never succeed in doing a total reboot of every single property in their entire catalogue. DC has been trying to do this for 25 years and still hasn’t gotten it right. A Marvel reboot might sound like a fine idea when you look at Spider-Man continuity, where Flash Thomspon is Venom, and Spider Island something something, and nobody’s sure what happened to all that marriage continuity. The trouble comes when you decide to wipe away everything at the same time, and then you notice that Daredevil just started a new direction and it’s a shame to start over again so soon, so you decide to keep DD’s continuity even as you eliminate Spidey’s. So what happens to all the stories where Daredevil teamed up with Spider-Man? Uh, nobody knows. That is why people need wikis to know what’s going on.
You may say “Fine, screw it, reboot everything at the same time, no mercy,” but that’s not realistic. There will always be a handful of sacred cows that the publisher won’t want to touch. You’d better believe someone at DC wanted to reboot the Batman books in September, and somebody else pointed out that they can’t because Grant Morrison’s storylines need at least another year to wrap up, and they’ve spent years building up the new Batwoman. So they just slapped a fresh coat of paint on Batman and called it good. That’d be fine except it undermines the concept for the event. (Why is Batman: The Dark Knight starting over at #1? Because Superman has a new costume? Because it’s September? Why does Superman’s marriage need a reboot when Batman’s bastard son doesn’t?)
For the sake of argument, though, let’s say Marvel could tear off the band-aid and reboot their whole universe–no exceptions, everybody’s origin is redone in a new #1 in the same month. This would achieve Zircher’s goal–a fresh start, no cumbersome backstory, no trying to remember all the character’s complex relationships…for a month. The problem with “all-new 1st issue!” is that it is invariably followed up by “2nd issue that expects you to have read the last one,” which isn’t a whole lot different than the 17th or the 603rd.
Zircher dismisses the idea of doing a reboot in an alternate universe, and I’m pretty sure that’s to avoid comparisons to Ultimate Marvel. But let’s face it, whatever problems the Ultimate Universe has would be the same if it were the one and only Marvel Universe. No matter how clean the start is, after ten years you end up with a mess of continuity, and stories people would rather forget, and deaths people would like to undo, and resurrections people would like to retcon. And that’s not even counting the various callbacks Ultimate Marvel makes to its forebearer, so that you have to familiarize yourself with two universes to keep up. DC does the same thing–how many times has the post-Crisis DCU expected you to get a reference to the pre-Crisis DCU that DC tried so hard to get rid of? Whoever you get to write your reboot is going remember what came before and cannot help but hint at it. If you reboot X-Men tomorrow, I guarantee that a year later they’d be teasing Jean Grey becoming Phoenix and Warren Worthington becoming Archangel.
This is where we get into the problem with scheduling reboots at regular intervals, so that every generation of new readers gets to get in on the ground floor. It’s possible the new readers might like that, but the old readers (who were your new readers five years ago) are going to quickly get sick of seeing the same stories re-told over and over. Now, with a character like Spider-Man or Captain America, I suppose you can argue their early adventures are the best material for stories, and there’s merit in revisiting those ideas repeatedly with different creative teams. But remember, we’re talking about a line-wide reboot. How many times do you need to see the Thunderbolts exposed as the Masters of Evil? Does anyone want to read about Professor X training the New Mutants and to be X-Men for about sixty issues…until it starts over and he recruits the same kids in the next reboot? Can Spider-Man finally save Gwen Stacy if he gets ten more tries at it?
You can say that we only have one story about Hamlet that gets told again and again, but I’d argue that Hamlet hasn’t exactly made waves in the field of ongoing serialized fiction. In that format, the point is what happens next. To be sure, Zircher is right to complain about the overreliance on what came before. But a reboot doesn’t fix that–it just stitches next to before in a continuity ouroboros, where it no longer matters what happens next because nothing actually does.
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If Marvel weren’t running a business and were, instead, looking to create wonderful serialized art, I’d push for a staggered reboot. Dump absolutely every title and start with the core: Captain America, Spider Man, Fantastic Four and X-Men. As characters get introduced in the first year, add to the lineup… the Four meet Tony Stark? Iron Man comic in year 2. Spidey ends up in Hell’s Kitchen and gets into a pissing match with Daredevil? DD comic in year 2. Captain America interacts with SHIELD? Start a SHIELD spy-type comic in year 2.
It could work, and work well in some respects. Use Spidey to introduce street stuff, Cap to go international, X-Men to hit space and weird and the Four to hit the science heroes. Wrap up year 2 with a big teamup that serves as the impetus for the creation of the Avengers.
The more I think about it, the more I like it. They could even throw out a couple of anthology titles to cover some of the more marginal characters. Does “Werewolf by Night” need to be its own book? Probably not, but it’d make a fine semi-annual “Tale to Astonish.”
Only real threat, aside from putting many, many people out of work, would be diluting your film brand. I don’t know if you really would, though… the old books are out there. Declaring Marvel: Year Zero would be a chance to cut loose and allow for an organic creation.
Of course, things that are declared “Year Zero” never end well.
On the other hand, if Marvel wants to go all in and reboot everything, I’ve got a year of Iron Man that would reboot him wonderfully. Crusading industrialist! Sexy tech! Arcade as a failed MMORPG creator! The Fixer as a savantish trophy bride! Call me, Axel! I work cheap!
I feel the fact that Marvel doesn’t know what to do with the Ultimate line is proof they can’t handle a reboot.
If less “confusing” continuity was all that was needed to attract new readers the Marvel Adventures line would sell better than it does…
Isn’t MA Spidey Marvel’s top subscription title?
Then again, the great MA line has been marginalized so much that people forget Jeff Parker had a longer Avengers run than Dan Slott.
http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/08/29/marvel-season-one-artwork-mckelvie-alves-marquez-edwards/
Mildly related.
Reboots don’t erase continuity. They just create more of it, and ensure it’s more confusing.
Continuity is, in essence, the enemy. We don’t need it. It is in a word why I don’t read comics. It’s what makes this into a soap-opera.
And then there’s worse: Cross-series continuity. Crossovers. Not only do I have to read n-1 issues of Fantastic Four to know the full story about them, I also have to read n issues of Spiderman to know who this green guy with the pumpkin bombs is. But he just showed up at the end of one issue and everyone else in the store is cheering and I don’t know why.
So now I, the new fan, have to read TWO complete series just to read ONE comic book. And maybe there’ll be something in the Spiderman series that’ll send me somewhere else, to find out about that guy in yellow with those knives coming out of his knuckles. I don’t know. It’s like if Days of Our Lives had random crossovers with General Hospital.
Maybe we’d be better off if Spiderman wasn’t in the X-man universe.
Trevel-
Chances are it is fairly obvious that the green guy with the pumpkin bombs is, in fact, what is known as a “supervillain”. If the writer is any good, it should also become pretty obvious that Spider-man particularly does not like him. Likewise, you should be able to piece together that the yellow guy with claws is some manner of superhero. And kind of a dick. You don’t need to read entire runs to at least have a basic understanding of most issues of something, and if you do, well . . . either you should skip this particular story arc, or you should learn to piece things together from context and/or worry less about details.
I’ve been reading volume 1 of The Essential Punisher lately, and thus far it is a collection of issues of Spider-Man that are generally years apart. I do not need to go read all the issues in between because I need to know why Peter Parker is a student-teacher now and he’s working for a different newspaper, or who the hell “Hitman” is, or why the hell Captain America is apparently an artist and wear short shorts–I just roll with it. You can still understand the just of what is going on 90% of the time.
I always bristle when continuity is addressed like a hostile force that’s invading comics and despoiling the landscape. I understand why people don’t like aspects of continuity-it means even terrible stories can have ripple effects for years afterward, and an outside reader might think you enjoy the white breakdancing rapper hero “Rhymes” they introduced in 1989, when actually you hated him when he was first introduced.
But the thing is, continuity has good effects, too. And that’s why I bristle about it being treated like a monster, because it’s the reason why we can have character relationships that actually have a beginning, middle and end. Continuity itself is neither good or bad, it is a tool, and it can be used or misused. The call out to a past issue can be a subtle reference that pleases long term fans without blocking out new ones, or even an obvious note that this character has a past…but that’s okay, you can still follow along. Or it can be the source of 6 issues that require you to read much of the title’s 90s run, whether you like it or now. How it’s used is the important thing.
Trevel’s on to something, though. In the 60s–which I’d argue were the high-water mark for superhero comics, both in terms of sales and cultural relevance–comics were largely self-contained and continuity-light. Marvel had introduced the concept of ongoing storylines and events or stories that would cross over between titles, but it never got overwhelming; usually it amounted to an editorial plug in the bottom corner from ol’ Stan. Even major events that actually changed the status quo tended to be simple, like Reed and Sue getting married. The more convoluted and nerdy stuff (like the Hulk’s exact MO and colour) was just quietly brushed aside; you weren’t likely to see anyone talking about Grey Hulk past 1962, or even if you did it would be in passing. It wasn’t until the 70s that comics really started to disappear up their own asses, deciding that if, say, a character got a new costume, they wouldn’t just change it between issues; they would make a big deal out of it, point it out in the dialogue, even (as the years went by) hype it as a big event and give it some convoluted rationale.
This is basically the kind of thing comics need to stop doing. I agree with CapnFrance that a new reader isn’t going to be completely lost picking up an ongoing story if the writing is decent enough; comics had no trouble bringing in new readers back in the days of the Dark Pheonix Saga. Knowing that there was a Tolkien-style elaborate backstory to everything, one that you might never be able to do more than glimpse, used to actually be part of the appeal of comics. Of course, now, with reprint volumes and so on, this doesn’t have to be a factor, either. The problem isn’t continuity, per se; it’s fetishizing continuity for its own sake, which is what reboots do.
The big problem is that the continuity that people make a big deal out of is often made up of patches and rewrites. If I just introduce Beast as a blue, furry guy, no one finds it confusing; if I try to talk about how the character started as a big bruiser who looked basically human, and then he continued to mutate due to taking an experimental potion, or whatever, I start to lose people, and for no particular reason. Why would a new reader need to know that Beast wasn’t always blue and furry? Why would they need to know that Batman’s butler briefly died and came back to life as a supervillain? Why would they need to know that there was an impostor Captain America in the 50s? Unless you’re actually building a story around this crap, it shouldn’t get mentioned. The trouble is that the Geoff Johnses of the world WANT to build stories around this crap, which simply reduces the potential audience, and makes the stories about esoteric weirdness that most people can’t relate to. And the fanboy writers can’t simply let it lie, either–if Alfred was The Outsider, they can’t just not mention it, they have to do a story retconning it into something else.
If the characters are engaged in regular, sane behaviour, it’s not hard for a new reader to pick up on. “These characters are married.” “This character’s wife died.” “This character used to work for this organization, but she quit.” Etc. It’s “This character was replaced by his evil duplicate from another dimension, who then ate the sun and farted a parasite that is secretly taking over everyone’s brains…” that’s hard to explain.
I think the model for this stuff ought to be All-Star Superman, which created its own, offstage continuity that was perfectly easy to follow even if you weren’t a lifelong Superman reader. I’m not saying you can’t have wild, bizarre storylines that last more than an issue, but by the end of the story the status quo should be, if not completely restored, then left in a place where it won’t need ridiculous amounts of explanation.
I know how a Marvel reboot could work.
In the first issue of every rebooted Marvel comic, the Watcher appears and tells them everything that’s going to happen in their crime-fighting career. Gwen Stacy is gonna die, Jean Grey is gonna chow down on a few planets, etc. He’s been watching for decades for the exact purpose of telling them how it’s going to go down when time restarted itself.
Then the Watcher disappears, and all the heroes do everything they can to make the stories come out different this time.
For a reboot to be fresh, it has to have knowledge of what came before. Give the characters that knowledge and their stories will go in entirely new and exciting directions.
To be fair though, when most people complain about continuity, it’s not necessarily continuity itself, but the slavish devotion to it, and the constant need to make everything fit no matter the cost.
I think few people really mind having a history to the shared universe; that’s great and can help drive characters and stories. But sometimes it’s better to ignore the parts that don’t work, keep the things that are good, and like the article says, focus on what comes next.
The bottom line is, the status quo should never be so complicated that you need more than those old summaries that used to appear over the first page of a Marvel comic. If you need more than two sentences to communicate the gist, the real essence, of Green Lantern to a brand new reader, you have no business writing comics. The details can get messy and complicated. The core never should be. Hell, even Sinestro as GL in the DCnU should be summed up as simply as “Disgraced former GL Sinestro has been reinstated by the founders of the Corps, the Guardians of the Universe. He is now assigned to protect a world he once threatened: Earth.”
Simple and to the point. And for God’s sake, don’t have him constantly reference Hal Jordan unless Jordan’s going to be a big presence in the comic.
The DCU was successfully rebooted in a spin-off once, in a staggered method like Sean describes: The DC Animated Universe. If you follow it all the way from B:TAS to Batman Beyond (with Supes and the JLA shows in between), they essentially DID pull off a universe-wide reboot that let them rewrite the premise of several characters (like Freeze), introduce new and lasting ones (Quinn), and completely change the fates of numerous characters.
Of course, that was TV, not comics. But I do think it’s evidence that type of reboot-as-spinoff-universe can work.
I have to say, this whole “continuity discourages readers” thing is indeed bullshit. In truth, it’s half the fun. In addition to what has been mentioned in this thread already, what new fans need is merely a place (or places) to start; a few good, accessible stories that can give them their footing in a particular character’s corner of the world, and then go from there. For instance, two of my closest friends have really gotten into comics over the past year, starting with Batman in both cases, and I recommended the same set of stories to start them off, and it’s gone beautifully from there.
Building off of both rbx5 and Chris’s comments, I maintain that the continuity is really the only thing that superhero comics have going for them anymore. The long-term, metastory is all that they can do that other media can’t. Movies can do the visuals, and the DCAU proved that TV can do the stories just as well if not better. The only advantage the have, the only thing really unique to superheroes in comics anymore, is the sense of history and shared universe that only happens when you have thirty or forty odd series happening in the same place at more or less the same time.
Without that shared universe, and that sense that what you’re reading is a tiny chunk of a universe that is going on outside your view and has extended backstory, comics have nothing unique to them. The days of only being able to tell these particular types of stories on the printed page are over and done. If I just want a superhero story, I can go elsewhere for a better return on investment. Twenty bucks for a two hour movie and that again in extras. Maybe thirty on Amazon for a B:TAS boxset that lasts for hours. Or a ten dollar trade I breeze through in an hour or so. You take away that metastory, and you’ve removed the sole feature that makes superhero comics a distinctive take on the characters.
Do we need slavish continuity? Not at all. Every time a writer decides he hates story X, and will go out of his way to tell a new story retconning X, we’re all poorer for it. If you don’t like X, here’s an idea. DON’T MENTION IT. We all know the clone saga happened. And for a decade and a half, we were all smart enough to just not talk about it and pretend it never occurred. Now Kaine’s running around as Tarantula or somesuch. And the reverse is just as bad. Yes, the Dark Phoenix saga was great. But y’know something? Having every damn version of Jean Grey manifest flames, hint at turning evil, or die over and over is boring as hell.
Backstory can be your friend, or your enemy. It’s your friend if knowing the details about something thrown in to a current story is just a cool little shout out. It’s your enemy if you have no idea what’s going on unless you have a working knowledge of Pantha’s career.
Everyone is talking about a reboot to fix continuity issues to fix mistakes made in the past. And I think Trevel’s got it. Continuity really is the enemy.
What authors really want to do is pick up a character, or a set of characters, and tell a compelling story. And that’s what the readers want too. At this point, most of the characters have a pre-established “status quo” that anyone can recognize. It seems like Marvel could sit down and say “We’ve got Warren Ellis doing Spiderman. He wants to do 18 monthly issues and he wants Hulk to be in three. Create a comic book [Warren Ellis’s Spider Man 2011] and let him write it for a year and a half, on the condition that he wraps up the series at the end. None of this shit will affect the greater meta-verse. Send him the papers.”
Ellis can spend an issue or two spelling out the Spiderman status quo (Does he live with his Aunt Mae or is he married to Mary Jane? What’s his job? Etc). Then let him cut loose, no strings attached. At the end of the 18-month series, you’ve got all the material you need for a trade paperback. Everyone knows exactly where to begin and where to end. No messy resurrections / murders / retcons in other papers.
You can call it an “alternate universe” if you like. Who cares? It’s a good story and people will enjoy it.
I’m new to comics. I’ve been reading comics only about four years now, and y’know, I already get angry about reboots. Continuity is not the enemy, hell, I think continuity may be why I like comics.
My first comic was an X-men comic. I went into it with the barest essentials of X-men knowledge. Cyclops shoots lasers from his eyes. Jean is Phoenix. They’re an item. Wolverine heals. The Prof reads minds and is crippled. He runs a school. Etc…
That first comic was Astonishing X-men. The school is run by Cyclops. Jean has been replaced by a scantily clad blonde. Somebody named Colossus was dead. And hell, Casandra Nova? And yet, I loved it. Loved this comic that was pretty steeped in X-men continuity, and frankly, I think I may have loved it BECAUSE of that. Anyone who would not read Astonishing X-men because it would ‘confuse’ them is never going to read comics, because it takes maybe a year or two of issues to get to that point. Unless you’re constantly resetting the Marvel universe and telling the same first two years of story, you’re going to run into this. That’s the nature of serialization.
Honestly, if you don’t like continuity, if you don’t want your fiction to be something that happens because of previous stories, and will have impact on later stories, then comic books are not for you. You might enjoy some trades, but the hook for serialized fiction is that it is serialized. Do some authors handle continuity better than others? You’re damned right they do. But when I read a comic, it’s not because I want to read a good, compelling story – it’s because I want to read a good, compelling story featuring a character whose personality and history I am intimately familiar with. I never want writers to change history, I want them to change the future.
Reminds me of an old Zen Koan…
A stubborn student, Nobushige, is studying at the local monastery.
The famous monk, Ekaku, asks “Two hands clap and there is a sound; what is the sound of one hand?” Nobushige replied “I can make a smaller sound with fingers against the palm on one hand. Should we measure the ratio in volume of these sounds for enlightenment?”
Ekaku beat Nobushige with a bamboo rod.
In particular, Nobushige stumbled with the concepts of reincarnation and Nirvana. How could a soul that was accustomed to rebirth, choose instead nothingness? Where would that choice occur, and why wasn’t that place (part of) Nirvana? Did reincarnated souls share any continuity with previous lives, and how?
A visiting master, Nan-in, attempted to instruct Nobushige. Nan-in explained how the rational mind uses words only to confuse when it comes to metaphysics, that these questions only seem to have force because of the power hidden in words. Nan-in asked Nobushige, “in the forest, a lonely tree falls – what is its sound?” Nobushige began to debate the technical definition of the word ‘sound.’
Nan-in beat Nobushige with a bamboo rod.
After many seasons, a dejected (and bruised) Nobushige rarely conversed with anyone besides a lowly kitchen scullery boy, Jim-Smith. Jim-Smith amused Nobushige with his lurid pulp comics, a welcome distraction from the stress and asceticism of monastic life. One day, Jim-Smith was showing Nobushige some of the Mar-Vel brand and remarked: The problem with “all-new 1st issue!” is that it is invariably followed up by “2nd issue that expects you to have read the last one”…
And in that moment Nobushige was enlightened.
Chris’ comment about the DC Animated series just reminds me about how self-involved and obsessed with continuity minutiae and callbacks Justice League Unlimited quickly became.
Reboots are a lot like the movies and TV shows, etc, based on the ‘original’ character. Why, if the first Spider-Man movie was an origin story and free from any preexisting continuity, did they have Mary Jane, and Uncle Ben, and Aunt Mae, and J. Jonah Jameson, and Green Goblin, and Harry Osbourne, and Dr. Conners, etc, etc, etc. Because, even without ‘real’ continuity, it is still following the basic continuity of the Spider-Man ‘brand’. So a reboot mostly ends up an excuse to reintroduce Spidey, and his rogues, and his buddies.
It’s yet another remake or prequel, just like the tons of Hollywood movies. It’s like a sequel, but doesn’t seem as scary because it doesn’t seem like there is a bunch of stuff you needed to know before the movie started. Except of course, most reboots or prequels are all about “hey, remember that scene in the original” or “and that is why that happened”.
The new Apes movie, which I felt was pretty good, still had it’s moments that required you to know about, at the very least, the original film. A “get your hands off me …” homage line here, references to astronauts going to Mars and getting lost there, and even subtle things like the policemen on horses with batons echoing the image of the apes on horseback, etc. Those are allusions and references that assume you know more than just what is going on in that movie.
Lots of books, movies, TV, music, etc … references other works. Often a pop culture, or literary, or biblical reference makes something more accessible, or at least makes it better enjoyed by those that get it, and is often just missed entirely by those that don’t. Sometimes it can be alienating, if there is so much that people know they are missing something and it is key to their enjoyment that they get it (Watching a topical comedy scene from an era of SNL you weren’t even alive for may end up falling a little flat, for example), but that’s a problem of excess. Overdoing anything is bad, generally speaking.
And, ultimately, if continuity, and the baggage of previous stories, and interconnectedness, etc was so horrible, the best selling books would be entirely new stories with no previous connection to any universe or any other characters. Sequels, remakes, prequels, etc wouldn’t outgross the films that preceeded them. A reboot doesn’t get rid of continuity, it just gets rid of some, and let’s writers do their own spin on the origins of the hero and most of their ‘iconic moments’.
There are a few different ways that comics can run. To compare to TV shows, you can go the Simpson’s route, where you have a status quo that more or less snaps back. Each story is self contained, and you probably know the status quo that exists before and after every story. Superman will still be Clark Kent, vying for the affections of Lois Lane who won’t give him the time of day, but loves Superman, who he can’t reveal is the same person to protect her, yada, yada, yada. You can tell lots of different stories, and there is no reason to read the others to enjoy it (except for occaisionally referencing older stories, as sometimes happens on the Simpsons and similar shows).
They can also go with the procedural, like House or Castle. The stories are more or less one shot, and most of the story involves the ‘superhero fight’ of the month, but around that is an ongoing narrative involving the supporting characters that stick around. Even then, it’s easy to get in an out, as any movement of character is pretty slow, with changes to a character often being a small recurring theme over time. Seeing all the episodes of Castle, you’ll see a number of “they belong together if only they could see it” moments, so you’d only have to catch a few episodes to be able understand if in a later season they got together, how that could have happened. It’s part of the TV concept that, espeically in the early years of a show, you want it to be possible for someone to catch say 1 out of 4 episodes and not be lost. Simiarly is Burn Notice, each week you have the A plot, which is the client of the week, which sometimes might involving recurring guest stars, but would let you get into without having to see the story in order, and then the B plot, which is a season long arc. Depending on the week, te B plot may be bigger or smaller, but generally, it does work in serial fashion of each week building from the previous.
Then you have the hardcore serial shows like the Showtime/HBO/AMC stuff. A show like Dexter, or Breaking Bad, etc doesn’t really give you an opportunity to miss a week. Now, they may end up treading similar ground in multiple episodes, but generally, you’d be a little lost if you went from episode 4 to 6 without watching 5. You could fill in the blanks, but you’d probably want to go watch the fill in.
The one thing with the last three they try to do is make earlier episodes accessible. Some people wait until they are all out together on DVD to watch them … and some people wait for the trade, and read it all at once.
I can see how that may be a goal with the DC relaunch. With their digital distribution idea, the entire ‘post-renumbering’ collection will be available digitally, and if they make it cheaper than the paper copies, they can give people the ability to get up to date cheap and easy, which is the one thing important for many of those shows (most run multiple times, often with repeats of the previous week leading in to the new episodes, etc).
Long story short … the main reason people buy comic books of characters like Superman, Batman and Spider-man, etc … is because of contnuity. They like the character, so they want to see more from that character. A reboot that eliminated everything from coninuity and started over with just the basic concept is likely something like the Tangent universe, or the “what if Stan Lee created the DC universe?” or other stuff like that. Some people may have enjoyed those, but they aren’t going to send people flocking to the comic shops.
Are those Archie Digest books that great of a best seller that if only DC and Marvel copied that style they’d be raking in big money. I just can’t see that continuity is the big barrier to entry it’s made out to be. I’m just wondering about how large the target group of “I would buy the comic if only it didn’t have so much contnuity” people are.
Yeah — I do need to clarify, heavy-continuity is the enemy ONLY against the question of getting new readers. There are a significant number of people who don’t want to start something midway through, even if they enjoy continuity-heavy things. And I’m one of them. But I would never have watched Dexter starting from episode 3, far less Season Three.
In terms of what comics can deliver, continuity is the product. Which is a major problem of comics; their best feature is also their barrier to entry.
Which is why they do stupid reboot events, and bring out #1 issues regularly … and also big continuity slathered events like The Day Everyone In The Universe Got Together And Died Or Mutated Or Something Else. And combine them, for some reason.
Walter — Comics are yet another step, beyond Dexter. Imagine that Dexter would occasionally have characters show up from CSI:Miami. And more, have subplots from CSI:Miami show up in Dexter episodes — and hey, while we’re at it, let’s have CSI investigate a Dexter-murder!
… and if you’re a fan of those shows, you’re probably thinking Awesome!. And if you’re a fan of ONE of those shows, you’re probably thinking “Hey, I’d watch THAT episode of CSI/Dexter, because it’s got Dexter/CSI in it.” Which is a good part of why they do it. But there’s also someone who’ll say “I’m not going to buy the CSI DVDs just to know what’s happening on Dexter…”
… on the other hand, I love the continuity of Discworld, where you can read pretty much any book out of sequence with pretty much any other book, and you won’t have missed much. A few spoilers, on occasion. You have a very real sense of seeing various stories in a singular world.
Maybe what the comic book world needs instead is a semi-regular “Previously On…” thing they can publish whenever they pause between plots — separate from the continuity series, just serving as an intended entry point that touches on everything from the previous series that you need to know to understand what’s about to happen. Give it away for free. Do one ever year, or every six months… and give them away free, or publish them online, or some such. “Here’s what you need to know to get started TODAY!”
… maybe they already do, but don’t publicize it enough for me to have heard of them.
I got a radical idea, how about Marvel does not reboot their whole universe and destroy the characterization of tons of characters. Characters who have loyal fans. Loyal fans who will be pissed off and maybe think to themselves: “Hey, this is a good point to stop collecting comics!”.
Ask Wizards of the Coast how well advancing their timeline of the Forgotten Realms 100 years went over. Ask the guys at FASA ( oops, they don’t really exist anymore ) how advancing their timeline 80 years worked for them.
Rebooting a continuity, be it now by resetting characterizations and character history or by jumping ahead some years is a high risk proposition. There are lots of examples where it has worked to the detriment of the publisher.
I buy comics (mainly Marvel) because I like continuity. I enjoy the layers of it, and a good writer won’t be bogged down by it, they just need to refer only when relevant.
I watch WWE as well, which is continiuity based too. They quietly drop stuff as time goes on, but still bring it back up when relevant.
If you want non-continuity, read Archie. I do read Archie. But nothing ever happens.
I think reboots are worse than just straight up having the back story, honestly. I really like Gail Simone’s Birds of Prey. If you tell me that didn’t happen, here’s a new Birds of Prey, I feel betrayed because I was invested in that title.
Usually it’s not that hard to jump in a comic and figure out what’s going on. I never regularly read Captain America until Ed Brubaker wrote it, but I didn’t have trouble with it. I didn’t know who Arnim Zola was at first, or Master Man or a lot of supporting characters, but the storytelling was there and I learned.
That’s what the focus needs to be on, right there. Not on restarting, not on explaining everything or changing the past, but on making good stories that are accessible. If it’s good enough, people will check it out.
On Continuity:
Dan Slott said it best when he paraphrased George Carlin’s bit on driving speed …
Everyone who cares less about continuity than you is an a-hole. Everyone who cares more about it is a maniac.
As I said back when I wrote my column on reboots for MGK, lo those many…um, year and a half ago…continuity is not the enemy. Poor expository writing is the enemy. Good writers explain what’s going on to the readers as they go. They make the stories immediately engaging even to people who might be confused about the details of the stories. They make sure that every issue is a good first issue even if it’s not _the_ first issue. Do that, and you can have as much continuity as you want. Fail, and your story will always seem dull and impenetrable.
The core point behind these discussions about reboots is: how do comic book companies get people reading comics again? Continuity is a double-edged blade in that particular discussion – it keeps people out while also locking some others in.
There might be a benefit in changing from continuous unending stories to a serialized story of Character X.
X gets a timeline, however many years/issues/arcs/whatever. Events get plotted long running sotries are made, developed and concluded. And then the Character’s story is done. They retire or die, or are lost, or go out in a blaze of glory.
A beginning. A middle. An end. And then maybe thier friend or kid or fan or whatever pick things up, and become Character Y. And the company/writers plan out how many years/issues/arcs/whatever Y gets.
And Y can reference X as thier inspiration and goal, or thier rival, or the person that made them get into the lousy line of work. Old support characters of X become people that might have a kind word or a boost for Y.
The continuity continues, but the stories stop being always tied to one person, one set of events.
It was not followed through on by the original writer, but the best example of this idea I can think of would be Neil Gaiman’s Sandman.
Honestly continuity is just a tool that can be used for good or evil. The real problem is bad writing. A good writer can seamlessly integrate previous events into their narrative (or know which ones to avoid), while a bad write won’t (and even worse will create more stories that will need to be avoided or used by bad writers in the future).
I like that I’m reading the same comics today that my grandfather read when he was a teenager (to his dying day he was upset that his mother threw out his collection). I even like the thought that after I’m dead my grandchildren will be reading (or downloading directly into their brain or whatever) the same comics that I read. It’s getting to be a small part of history, these characters were having adventures before we were born and they’ll still be having adventures long after we’re dead.
That bias admitted, I still can’t see how the DC reboot is a good idea. I don’t believe that there’s a huge customer base who simply hasn’t been buying comics because they missed buying issue 1 by 70 years. Same day digital has potential to bring in new customers as does DC’s plan to do a serious marketing push outside of comics to let people know about it (assuming they follow through). But a lot of the changes they’re making seem arbitrary, I don’t believe they have a large enough stable of talent to produce 52 good books a month, and how long will Geoff Johns et al be able to resist the urge to start heavily referencing pre-Flashpoint stories?
My shocking prediction, the titles with good writing and pretty pictures will sell, while those with poor writing and ugly art won’t. And a reboot won’t change that.
I have to agree that Ultimate Marvel proves Marvel can’t do reboots.
And DC wouldn’t need a reboot if Dan DiDio hadn’t let Geoff Johns set the ball in motion for completely destroying their continuity by writing Infinite Crisis.
Before Dan DiDio and Geoff Johns started changing stuff about eleven years ago, there was nothing seriously wrong with the DC Universe. Sure, some bitter Roy Thomas fans had things to complain about. And a bunch of characters that Johns and DiDio didn’t like were still alive. But otherwise… They were fine.
Just imagine how much better things would have been if real writers and editors had been steering the ship since 2000 or so instead of a bunch of “writer summit” drinking buddies using DiDio’s approach where stuff is only in continuity if he, Geoff Johns or Grant Morrison likes it.
Personally, I don’t see why they don’t move into more self-contained mini-series and such without being tied down to a continuity.
Some of the longest, best-selling books (Kingdom Come, All Star Superman, Watchmen, etc) have all been mini-series or something. Heck, even runs by creators that are more or less self-contained sell better in the long run. Busiek/Perez’ run on Avengers, Peter David’s Hulk, Geoff Johns’ Flash, Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing, Grant Morrison’s Animal Man.
Instead of trying to do things in continuity, where it just becomes more and more confusing, why not handle it with self-contianed mini-series or extended mini-series? Treat them less like a monthly series that ties into a dozen other books and treat them more like self-contained adventures like the Star Trek and Doctor Who novels.
Would that even be potentially viable?
The real reason reboots suck is that they try to breathe new life into characters seventy years old. Well, fifty if it’s Marvel.
The DC and Marvel universes need to die and the creators need to come up with something fresh.
In my early teens, my first Avengers comic after roughly 70 years not reading them was 106 (IIRC), the start of Englehart’s run on the title.
The plot of the issue involved a)the Space Phantom, a villain not seen since issue 2; b)a Cap vs. Hydra story that had never been printed before; c)Visions’ complicated relationship with Grim Reaper and Wonder Man. In short, a lot of continuity.
I loved it.The sense these characters had lives before, and that those lives had changed intrigued me (at the time, most mystery novels and TV shows tended to avoid any sort of change or continuity, IIRC– much more so than Silver Age comics–so this was really different).
I was confused a little by the Space Phantom’s reference to Cap’s secret identity (resolving a loose end from Cap’s own book, I think) and a lot by Rick Jones morphing into Captain Marvel, but even that didn’t kill my interest
On the other hand, one reason I stopped even browsing X-Men was that the books all seemed to be some increasingly recursive knot of self-reference. So as others have said above, storytelling is more the issue than the continuity.
I think continuity works great until you find yourself justifying Batman being 35 years old or whatever for the last 50 years. There’s just too much history to fit into one character that’s not insanely old.
I like That Guy’s idea. Bruce Wayne Batman should be long dead, either of old age or by way of an arch-enemy. Each generation should get its own Batman who has his own lifelong character arc. If a writer wants to do an “Untold Story of the 1960s Batman” then by all means, could be a fun way to tell a story set in the 60s, but that should be self-contained and not too many should exist.
Maybe what the comic book world needs instead is a semi-regular “Previously On…” thing they can publish whenever they pause between plots — separate from the continuity series, just serving as an intended entry point that touches on everything from the previous series that you need to know to understand what’s about to happen. Give it away for free. Do one ever year, or every six months… and give them away free, or publish them online, or some such. “Here’s what you need to know to get started TODAY!”
@Trevel
Marvel has done both at different points in time. Most of their books feature a recap page at the beginning of the issue (along with a character roster) and (i don’t know if they still do it) Marvel would these free 22 page summaries called “Sagas” at your LCS that usually summed up notable events prior to an event or a new book launching (tho I remember they released one that summed up all the current events of all the big Marvel books at the time).
Gravy,
While I agree that characters need to have arcs to tell a complete story, I don’t know that getting rid of Bruce Wayne is a viable option. I’d be in favor of having a line of comics where the characters stick around forever, staying very close to the classic interpretations (Superman works at the Daily Planet, love triangle with Clark and Lois, etc) and one where the story moves past the status quo (Dick as Batman, etc.).
Total reboots are problematic for all the reasons sited here and elsewhere. Don’t like them especially, but they can be interesting on their own. Ultimately, though, they destroy immersion — those aren’t “my” characters that I’m reading now, they’re imitations.
A better idea might be what I’ll call, for lack of a better term, an inline reboot. That’s essentially what Russell Davies did with the new Doctor Who series — rather than starting over from scratch, he simply moved things along and made significant enough changes that it was a new thing, yet was still informed by the continuity that came before. That continuity simply wasn’t necessary for everyone to know; it was just fun if you did.
I don’t see why Marvel can’t do the same sort of thing. Just stop everything — wind up all the outstanding storylines, or not, as the case may be. Pick up everything five years later, continuity wise. Introduce us to the new characters, reintroduce us to the characters who are sticking around, and don’t bring up the past unless it’s absolutely essential to the new story.
The next thing I would do is that, starting with the new starting point, allow time to move forward. It doesn’t have to be 1-to-1; it could be 3-to-1 or 5-to-1, so that for every five real-world years, for example, 1 comics-world year passes. Characters get old. Characters retire. Characters die. Masked identities get picked up by new replacements, or simply fall by the wayside. New characters are introduced.
Because of the constant timelessness of characters, we miss out on a lot of potential storytelling as characters age and their relationships mature, and then their story is done. Enter the next generation.
Yeah, I know it will never happen. I just think it would be a good idea.
Another problem with today’s comics is the constant crossover events. One event is barely done before another one begins. There are simply too many titles to follow everything involved in an event, so for the past 10 years or so, I’ve barely had any idea what was going on — and I only read X-Men books (just not all of them).
Stop the crossovers. Tell a single story in a single title and let it move on without crossing over into something else. Have the occasional crossover event, rarely, maybe, but make it easy to follow.
Now, that’s my 2 cents, for what it’s worth, which isn’t much, because I stopped buying comics regularly with the cancellation of Uncanny X-men. I’m an outsider now, just looking in now and then for nostalgia’s sake.
Ultimate Marvel doesn’t prove that Marvel can’t do reboots, it proves that they don’t know how to give shitty writers the fucking boot before they wreck shit all beyond repair. The Ultimate U was fine before Loeb fucked it over.
At best Millar’s Ultimates is an entertaining but twisted alternate reality version of Avengers. At worst it’s an attempt to do revitalized modern day Avengers story that misses the point of the Avengers. Then Loeb came along and set everything on fire in the third volume.
Ultimate X-Men was never anything special. Even my favorite run (BKV) was just sort of average. Then Loeb came along and set everything on fire in Ultimatum.
Ultimate Spider-Man is actually kind of impressive for its longevity … but we still only got about ten years before Bendis got bored and killed off the moral center of the Ultimate Universe.
As the or one of the “that guy” that says there should be a reboot, I completely disagree.
1) Don’t reboot & don’t call it a reboot. A reboot implies the last incarnation failed so it had to be restarted. Not so. Simply tell the story for a decade then end the story. People already refer to characters by the decade they were published in. This is simply refining the process.
2)Next year we’re getting a Spider-man movie & a Superman movie in 2013. Both are doing origin stories again. Just as many people would complain if there wasn’t one. There’s also no reason why you can’t start your story AFTER the origin. It would also be nice for a change is every character wasn’t either 35, 25 or 15.
I agree with the point that it’s not continuity that’s the problem, it’s bad writing. I’d go further and say it’s bad continuity. I love continuity—I ate that multiple-earths stuff up with a spoon when I was ten, had no trouble understanding it. But what finally soured me on DC was the fetishization of the distant past and minutiae. I felt like writers were too concerned with harkening back to some story line from their childhood, at the expense of the kind of continuity everyone loves: logical character development, plausible back stories, etc. I’d love to see these characters live and interact in a complex, fully formed world, but instead they usually feel like caricatures bogged down with extraneous details.
I think its a deeper problem with modern Superhero comics in general.
Take Doctor Who, which I personally consider to be the very pinnicle of the serialized storytelling format. Doctor Who can run forever, but thats because its has a very loose framework which allows for heaps of stories and almost all the character arc are with the companion (who is replaced regularly) or with people who are only there for one episode.
But if you take something like current Batman comics its not quite the same. Yes you have a framework for stories (vigilante in a corrupt city which is occasionally overrun by colourful psychopaths) but people expect for each story to have an impact which is carried around forever. And thats before getting to shared universes.
I hate to do a double comment, but I just had an idea.
The simplest way to fix any sort of continuity problem: Start every comics with something similar to that horror comics hosts. Imagine an issue of Batman starting with one cop telling another cop “did I ever tell you the story of how the Batman from out in Gotham stopped a criminal with control over all plant life?”
Then you can attribute any inconsistencies, such as age, the year, the number of robins, anything to the person telling the story getting details confused.
Mentioned a LONG time ago in this thread was the issue of crossovers. I stopped reading comics in roughly 1984. I got into girls, music, partying, etc. ANYWAY
When I started reading again two years ago, I discovered that, to follow a storyline through completely, I had to buy and read two or three other series. I get the marketing behind that, but that’s the point; I don’t want to buy two other series and I know exactly why you’re doing it. Just run a storyline through the series I’m reading and don’t make me pick other irritating books just to do so. It’s a real turnoff and makes me not wanna read.
Only my two cents.
DC want us to buy their supposedly great characters with long history, but then they toss that history for retroactive retools. I think they’re actually mentally ill!