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Derek Rogers
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Posted: 15 January 2019 at 2:17pm | IP Logged | 1 post reply

Just finished reading Young Justice #1 and really enjoyed it. It was fun and big and I thought the art was pretty superb. I'm pretty excited to see Bendis' plan to show how everything's been connected. 

MILD SPOILERS





In the first few pages, Carnelian talks about the previous seven crises - how each crises changed everything. I like the acknowledgement of all the reboots as if they are part of one long continuity - the revelation that everything is canon.

Looking forward to see which legacy characters Bendis brings back.
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John Byrne
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Posted: 15 January 2019 at 2:19pm | IP Logged | 2 post reply

sigh
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Matt Hawes
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Posted: 15 January 2019 at 3:28pm | IP Logged | 3 post reply

Wow. Seven Crisis... DC is really working on that "Infinite" thing. 
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Michael Roberts
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Posted: 15 January 2019 at 3:35pm | IP Logged | 4 post reply

Don’t worry. I’m sure in a few years DC will decide all these Crises are confusing and have a big Omega Crisis to straighten everything out. 
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Trevor Thompson
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Posted: 15 January 2019 at 5:06pm | IP Logged | 5 post reply

Fixing something that nobody cared about - except fan boys. Back in the day I read comics with no idea what happened a few issues or years before it. They stood alone as a single piece or part of a bigger story.

Edited by Trevor Thompson on 15 January 2019 at 5:06pm
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Brian Hague
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Posted: 15 January 2019 at 8:04pm | IP Logged | 6 post reply

One of the main things that I, as a reader, found exciting was that there was a story associated with these characters that went back decades before I was born. There were some contradictions baked in, yes, but the whole thing grew organically from humble beginnings to a vast series of interconnected stories that informed one another and made for a rich, colorful tapestry. Two Robotmen. The Golden Age Clark Kent at the Daily Star. The hunt for Deadman's killer. Things went a bit odd in places, but you could find out why and put it all together because it was all true to some extent. 

Marvel writers had tried to force some bizarre connections between concepts and make everything more Marvel-esque (The Manhunters, for example) which forced some retcons into uncomfortable places, but overall, DC was richly imaginative enough to survive these anomalies. 

Then the Crisis hit and the work of generations before was erased, supplanted by writers who assured us that everything was fine; they had this, when, in fact, they most assuredly did not. None of the stories fit together anymore. None of the characters rang true. Everything was now build on shifting sands and entirely dependent upon whatever someone thought up this month to fix what went wrong the month before. Continuity patches and fixes became the norm. New origins were pumped out like chocolates in a skit from I Love Lucy. Garbage fiction replaced the solid work done by professionals over the years, and all of it had to happen now, to fill in everything that had been thoughtlessly erased. 

The inventions they devised were more sad than inventive. Character pasts became tortured, twisted series of nonsensical events. Heroes who had once been shown as wholly original on their world became legacy heroes on the new one and crowd scenes became over-crowded as every hero was now a franchise. The more DC tried to spackle over the cracks, the more they grew into faultlines. The solution? Do it all over again! And when that failed, do it again. And again. 

I love the fact that someone puts the count at seven for the number of restarts. Over in the Legion, they maintain they only rebooted three times, despite the time-clones, extended hypertime storylines, and that weird bit no one talks about where Brainiac Five looked like Benjamin Franklin and Cosmic Boy was the Time Trapper. Even if that sprang from some existing iteration of the team, reimagining the book is still reimagining the book. Somehow that one doesn't count, though, nor do the number of occasions where one hero popped out of existence and another popped in, just to play with the notion of their wrecked history being in a state of constant "Crisis."

The solution to Crisising is to stop doing it. I truly hope this bit Bendis is playing with doesn't presage the next. On the other hand, the very mechanism of storytelling; the trust between storyteller and reader has been violated so continuously by the company that they've convinced themselves that betrayal is, in fact, their stock in trade. 

"Little Miss Muffet, Sat on her tuffet, Eating her curds and... No. Crisis. Little Miss Muffet is removed from continuity so Little Bo Peep will now fill in for her. Little Bo Peep sat down on her, I don't know, bleep, Eating her... What's that? Who's watching the sheep? Um, Little... Boy Blue is filling her place for that part of her history... But he's unreliable you say? Is he? I didn't read his story before plugging him in there. So, um, it's a Boy Blue replacement guy, who can change shapes. He killed the original Boy Blue to take his place to get to the sheep, see? Even though they weren't originally his in the original story... What? If he's dead all along, who blows the horn that gets the sheep out of the meadow and the cows from the corn? Um... Wow, this is more complicated than I thought it was going to be... It was... give me a moment... Um, Hornblower, a new retcon character I just came up with, okay? Okay? Good... whew. Where was I? So, Bo Peep is eating something, right, and... DC already has a Hornblower? I'm not getting a royalty check for my guy? Well, f*ck this then. Bo Peep takes out a f*ckin' machine gun and mows down all the children who live in the shoe. The End. I'm outta here! Cue the appearance of the all-powerful Monitor Goose who waves her magic wing and restarts the universe... Little Bo Peep (because so many readers are invested in her character now that no one really remembers Miss Muffet. This change sticks.) sits down on her tuffet. (Reader polls show a definite love for the tuffet. We don't care that it doesn't rhyme. The story's better this way. We promise.) She eats pizza and smokes from a vape pen. We are edgy. Along comes a spider who tells her he has eaten her sheep. She learns a valuable lesson about leaving her responsibilities unattended while indulging herself with pizza. She attempts to kill the spider to avenge her flock. Boy Blue, Jack B. Nimble, and Snow White show up to save the spider. It turns out he is the original Miss Muffet's father in demonic form. Sorry. We meant Bo Peep's. Okay, it was both of them. They're sisters in this new continuity. Like Snow White and Rose Red. Except there are actually two Snow Whites with incompatible histories and Grimm is an entirely separate universe anyway. Damn. Things were going so well there for a minute... So, the sisters are all twin clones and everyone's memories are false. Because of demons. Now the line becomes a slew of demon-puppets and no one's history is as we said it was because their memories were wrong. Good. That works and opens up some storytelling options. It's a stealth Crisis. We can rewrite everything all over again and do it right this time. So, that one day when Bo Peep was sitting down to enjoy bean sprouts and a carrot (We are now veggie-edgy)...? She found Miss Muffet sitting in her place. Ha. Plot twist. Didn't see that coming, did you? The two battled across the seven galaxies for possession of the tuffet. It all resulted in a schism that divided the universe into two, one with Miss Muffet running the show. The other with Bo Peep. The two universes begin to unravel with the appearance of a third, in which Boy Blue is the ruler of all things. But he is asleep and the sheep and cows are running wild, devouring everything because of demons again. We were trying to get away from those but they fit here so it's demons again. The three universes battle one another leading to... a Crisis. The universe resets itself. Little Miss Muffet sits down on her tuffet and Bo Peep appears in a beam of light warning her not to go any further. A demonic spider lurks nearby..."

See? It's simple storytelling 101. Easy as can be.


Edited by Brian Hague on 15 January 2019 at 8:10pm
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Brandon Frye
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Posted: 15 January 2019 at 8:06pm | IP Logged | 7 post reply


 QUOTE:
Fixing something that nobody cared about - except fan boys.

Aren't the fan boys pretty much the ones writing the stories now?
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Rod Collins
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Posted: 15 January 2019 at 8:26pm | IP Logged | 8 post reply

Fixing something that nobody cared about - except fan boys. Back in the day I read comics with no idea what happened a few issues or years before it. They stood alone as a single piece or part of a bigger story.

*****

Back in the day before middle-aged white guys hung onto the books from their youth and threw an online tantrum any time someone "changes" something.

My favourite character is Spider-Man, but I haven't read any issues of the series since JB's run. The last time I read Spider-Man regularly before that was McFarlane's run. This is because I understood that it wasn't being written for me anymore.

If more people could work that out and move on, and/or diversify their reading habits, you wouldn't need to do this. Unfortunately many people feel they need complete runs of a series, even though the issues they identify with the most are ones that they first read as a kid. They keep reading the series hoping to get that same feeling again, but it never eventuates, so they blame the current creators for not catering for their needs. Once you break that habit it's possible to understand why the creators aren't catering for you any more. Simply put, the world has moved on.

If those guys let go, creators wouldn't feel pressured to continually reboot books/universes.


Edited to add final remark.

Edited by Rod Collins on 15 January 2019 at 8:34pm
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Brian Hague
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Posted: 15 January 2019 at 9:07pm | IP Logged | 9 post reply

Rod, I like your point of view. I'm not invested in comics anymore myself, having checked out years ago, checking back in briefly for the Nu52, and then back out again for keeps, apparently. While I enjoy mocking the DC of the Post-Crisis era, I don't read anything much from them today. I remain curious about developments, but I'm not buying anything outside of the occasional reprint, curiosity purchase*, or back issue. 

I'm not certain, however, that the pressure to reboot is coming from without. It really does seem as if DC now thinks of reboots as a sales-boosting device, regardless of their impact on storytelling or their credibility with readers. The local library has a small selection of Supergirl trades. Only two of them tie in with one another. All of the others present different versions of the character, at different ages, with differing tones. 

I get that my Supergirl isn't coming back, and I'm not calling for her to do so anymore. I don't know that I ever did. But for new readers? Pick a lane and stick to it, people. This isn't rocket science. 

* Neal Adams' Deadman, for instance.

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Rod Collins
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Posted: 15 January 2019 at 9:20pm | IP Logged | 10 post reply

True, there is the company line that they are rebooting to make the universe less complex for new fans, which is kind of double speak for new #1 with which to increase our market share. Even though those new number ones have diminishing returns and the numbers drop off fairly quickly.

The problem with rebooting is that creators will inevitably start adding their favourite bits and pieces from prior to the reboot, making the reboot feel a bit pointless.
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Brian Hague
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Posted: 15 January 2019 at 9:35pm | IP Logged | 11 post reply

Also, titles on which sales are solid do not reboot, leading to carryover storylines from the "before" universe that must be dealt with in the new one. Green Lantern only sorta kinda rebooted for the Nu52 while stories involving the Black Lanterns and whatnot continued to roll forward. The Nu52 Superman didn't simply vanish in a puff of smoke when DC decided to bank instead on the Dan Jurgens 90's nostalgia version with a 10-year old son. A story had to be written to somehow reconcile the two and that meant that Wonder Woman, who was in a romance with the mandarin collar version, had to undergo some weird revisions as well. Whatever. Reboots are a badly flawed device, and one which has been terribly overused. 

Continuity can not be fixed at this point. Seven Crises? There is no way to put all of those genies back in their bottles. And no good story has ever come from the attempt to do so. DC should just let it go. They won't however. DC is in the Crisis business. It's their one trick and damn it if they're not going to whip and beat that nag to get one more performance out of her. And then another.

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Greg Kirkman
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Posted: 15 January 2019 at 9:51pm | IP Logged | 12 post reply

Rod, I like your point of view. I'm not invested in comics anymore myself, having checked out years ago, checking back in briefly for the Nu52, and then back out again for keeps, apparently. While I enjoy mocking the DC of the Post-Crisis era, I don't read anything much from them today. I remain curious about developments, but I'm not buying anything outside of the occasional reprint, curiosity purchase*, or back issue. 
+++++++++

Same, here.

We really should poll the group. How many of us here actually still buy and/or read present-day comics? 

I still gleefully seek out and buy back issues, but I have zero interest in modern stuff. Yet, despite not being invested, I’m still morbidly curious about the state of the industry. I suppose it all comes down to that idea of legacy. I can’t stand watching characters I love being warped and mismanaged. The iterations I actually care about are long gone, and yet the brand remains.

To repeat my oft-used metaphor: It’s like getting divorced, and watching your ex become a crackhead on skid row from afar. You’ve moved on, but you still can’t help but watch, worry, and feel powerless to stop it.
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