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Dave Phelps
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 4180
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| Posted: 19 January 2019 at 3:10pm | IP Logged | 1
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Eric Sofer wrote:
| At one point, I bought comics because of the characters - not because of the continuity or the creators. "It's Justice League! It's Fantastic Four! Yay!" And I was pretty confident that DC and Marvel would keep the level of art and story so good that it was worth it. |
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Yes and no. I don't think anyone follows a series for The Continuity, but continuity done properly feeds into characterization, which is where concerns about nullification come into play. Why should I care what happens if, next thing I know it, it hadn't happened?
And of course, the quality of the creative team frequently drives interest in the characters so even if we're not following specific creators in our younger days we kind of end up following specific creators. :-)
QUOTE:
| And then Crisis on Infinite Earths. We can discuss it further under other cover, but with respect to others's comments as above, it started a trend of "this story has lasted through the previous crisis" or "why bother reading if the next crisis is just going to change everything again?" |
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Crisis wasn't supposed to start a trend so I think "crediting" it for such is kind of blaming the victim. Legion aside (that's a whole 'nother issue stemming from giving "concerned fans turned pro" the wheel when Levitz left the second time), I frankly blame Dan Didio's combination of nostalgia, trying to have his cake and eat it too and pushing The Line over making individual books successful for the current "huh? what?" situation. From Superboy punches to Infinite Crisis to New 52 to Rebirth, it's hard to tell what counts anymore (see earlier comment about continuity feeding into character as to why that matters) and why you should care about any of these people as characters independant of who's working on them at the time.
(For what it's worth, currently I buy three DC books - Deathstroke and Green Lantern for the writers and Doomsday Clock for glimpses of the JSA and the Legion.)
QUOTE:
| The stories now matter LESS than the Continuity! |
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I wouldn't put it that way, since the stories pretty willfully ignore what they feel like. I see it more like "the DC Universe" matters more than the characters within it, which is bad because the playground's not supposed to be the subject matter.
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Dave Phelps
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 4180
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| Posted: 19 January 2019 at 3:10pm | IP Logged | 2
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Adam Schulman wrote:
| The only reboot I would've accepted would've been a near-total "back to basics" -- Dick Grayson is a teenage Robin, Wally West is a teenage Flash, Barbara Gordon is a young-adult Batgirl, Barry Allen (and Supergirl) never died, the Justice Society and Infinity Inc. live on Earth-Two (always at least 20 years behind Earth-One), etc. |
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QUOTE:
| Basically, "back to 1983" with a few tweaked details to remove the silliest stuff from various characters' back-stories. |
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The "picking which childhoods to ignore" aspect of the New 52 is one of the things I found the most maddening, so I can't really agree with this. What makes 1983 instrinsically superior to 1993 or 1973 or whatever?
If they wanted to start over, what they needed to do was Start Over. (AND give themselves some advance notice and preparation time so we didn't get stuck with the collection of dropped plots, anticlimactic fill-ins and such we got to close the old DCU.)
There shouldn't have been ANY Robin yet. Or a Batgirl, Supergirl, Justice League, etc. The Big Three are too entrenched in the public consciousness to get too crazy with, but for the rest, go back to those key elements and rebuild from scratch. Not doing so just made for a wasted opportunity.
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Adam Schulman
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 22 July 2017
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| Posted: 19 January 2019 at 3:27pm | IP Logged | 3
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Back to 1983 because that's before things started getting "abnormal." Example: 1983 is before Dick Grayson as Nightwing and Jason Todd as Robin, but still with a New Teen Titans. (Remember, that was DC's best-selling title at the time -- the second-best was LEGION!)
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Michael Roberts
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 20 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 14819
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| Posted: 19 January 2019 at 3:41pm | IP Logged | 4
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Back to 1983 because that's before things started getting "abnormal." Example: 1983 is before Dick Grayson as Nightwing and Jason Todd as Robin, but still with a New Teen Titans.
———
How do you square that with people who think Dick should have never aged and should remain Robin? Or people my age who prefer Tim to Jason? One could argue that you’ve picked the worst of all worlds.
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Doug Centers
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 February 2014
Location: United States
Posts: 5489
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| Posted: 19 January 2019 at 3:48pm | IP Logged | 5
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Well, as long as we're picking our favorite starting over points, I'll go when I left comics; 1980. And that just happens to be where ELSEWHEN is picking up.
I win!
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Thomas Moudry
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
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Posts: 5060
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| Posted: 19 January 2019 at 4:12pm | IP Logged | 6
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Must admit, I don't really worry about any of it: I just read what I like. I quite
enjoyed the new Young Justice #1.
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Dave Phelps
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 4180
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| Posted: 19 January 2019 at 4:22pm | IP Logged | 7
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Adam Schulman wrote:
| Back to 1983 because that's before things started getting "abnormal." Example: 1983 is before Dick Grayson as Nightwing and Jason Todd as Robin, but still with a New Teen Titans. (Remember, that was DC's best-selling title at the time -- the second-best was LEGION!) |
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Sure, and their most popular story was the one that included Dick Grayson becoming Nightwing... :-) IMO, pointing out the popularity of NTT and Legion is a weird choice for explaining why that should be the "reboot" line. Both of those series were pretty big on internal continuity (both involving the current run and prior incarnations) and character evolution.
Regardless, by 1983 Batman and Robin had not been in the "classic mold" for 14 years. Robin's involvement tended to vary based on who was writing the series at the time, but he was gone as often as not. That's "abnormal". Meanwhile, over in the Flash, Barry's primary love interest had been dead for almost four years so he's been abnormal for awhile. Even longer (16 years) if you question why they let him get married in the first place. (Which is about how long it's been since Hal Jordan was in his classic status quo of vying for Carol Ferris with his alter ego being his biggest rival.) And if the Legion is supposed to be a bunch of superpowered kids, what are the doing getting themselves married off (starting 10 years prior)?
Meanwhile, as of the New 52, 27 years worth of comics fans had Dick as Nightwing; 23 years worth of comics fans had Barbara as Oracle (and Tim Drake as Robin for that matter); fans from 25 years pre-New 52 were still left wondering why their Flash got kicked to the curb for the dead one; etc. Why were their childhoods less important?
The point being that "abnormal" is in the eye of the beholder and that if you're going to take an axe to the whole tree to plant a new one, you shouldn't play favorites just because you're in a position to give your childhood preferential treatment.
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Josh Goldberg
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 25 October 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 2065
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| Posted: 19 January 2019 at 4:30pm | IP Logged | 8
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Q4JB:
How does a comic book writer successfully create the illusion of change without crossing the line into real change?
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Shawn Kane
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 04 November 2010
Location: United States
Posts: 3239
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| Posted: 20 January 2019 at 6:14am | IP Logged | 9
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"I have no idea what’s going on, and I don’t want to have to buy 20 books just to enjoy and understand this one.”
I remember a few years back when Jonathan Hickman said in an interview that he understood that his comic stories were dense but cited Wikipedia as a reason readers shouldn't complain about doing homework to catch up on his stories.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 20 January 2019 at 6:28am | IP Logged | 10
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AAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!
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Greg Kirkman
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 May 2006
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| Posted: 20 January 2019 at 9:56am | IP Logged | 11
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Yes, let’s assume that all readers of all ages have Internet access, and are all inclined to refer to Wikipedia (a site which can be edited by anyone, anywhere, anytime) to explain the context of what should be an accessible story. What if Little Johnny NewReader went to Wikipedia to research the latest issue of a title, and it just so happened to be the day that the Wiki page was vandalized by trolls, or had inaccurate/false information added in?
Should there be appropriate Wiki links printed at the beginning of every issue, then? That would be the modern-day equivalent of those text pages that Marvel was putting in their comics at the turn of the century to explain the basics of a book and its characters. Instead of, y’know, writing in such as way as to make the storytelling clear without talking down to new readers, or boring longtime readers.
“AAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!” is right. Yeesh.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 20 January 2019 at 10:42am | IP Logged | 12
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I started reading SUPERMAN in 1956, when I was barely a year into being able to read at all. Despite that limitation, and the fact that the character had been around for almost twenty years, everything I needed to know was in that first story—a story that was only 12 pages in length, including a splash page to start things off. Were those simpler times? Yes, of course. There were no subplots, no continued stories, no deep diving into the characters personalities and back stories. But for the target audience—of which I was on the leading edge—it was all that was needed.
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