----------------------------------------------

Hickman is one of my favorite writers but that position is flat out wrong. If you have to look to an external source to understand what a writer is doing then the writer has failed. 

I don't know how much we can blame the writers though.  If a writer pitches "I want to do a series of status quo 1960's-80's style Batman stories where nothing changes," I doubt today's editors have the imagination to see how great that could be.  If the writer instead pitches "Everything you know about Batman is wrong!" I think the editor thinks "That's what the readers want!"  Or--

"Captain America is a Hydra agent!"

"Let's kill Speedy!"  (Or Aunt May!  Or Elongated Man!  Or Namor!  Or Prof. X!  Etc.)

"Let's make Thor a woman!"

"Let's make the Hulk non-white!"  (Or Iron Man!  Or Spider-Man!  Or Aqualad!  Etc.)

"Let's destroy the world and reboot everything!"

I think the editors just want something crazy that will spike sales for a few months and they don't realize that good, strong, consistent stories about iconic characters told by consistent creative teams are what will build strong sales for years.

I also think there's a lot of "This writer is an Indy darling and we should let them tell THEIR story with OUR character". They want the fans of the writer as well as the fans of the character. You get Rick Remender's fans to read Captain America but those fans don't want the classic Captain America type book, they want an edgier one ala Fear Agent. It seems Joe Quesada, no fan of continuity, felt this way (let's make the news with a controversy!). Axel Alonso introduced the concept of titles as "seasons" and I feel pandered to writers and artists to the point that they would do company wide re-designs on characters to go with their new status quo. With both of these guys in charge at Marvel, look how many "What you thought you knew about this character is wrong!" stories Marvel has done under their respective periods.

I've said it before: There's no editor at Marvel that will tell a superstar writer "That doesn't work for this character".

Seems to me there was a time at Marvel when an artist or writer knew what they were getting into when they went to work for them. The characters they drew or wrote were already established and it was just a case of continuing their characterization (and of course writing good stories). Now it appears as if the books are creator owned and they can do whatever they want with them. Captain America an agent of Hydra?! Really?! He would never ever do that. I guess it's Kewl or shocking.

To be honest. I'm clearly not their target audience. They're after fan boys. How can they make them happy.

***

I think the status quo circa 1983 was pretty "normal" in that it reflected what the "general public" knew about those characters. Some things were different but not THAT different.

And it has nothing to do with what I personally like. I like Wally West as the Flash. I like Tim Drake. I like Barbara as Oracle. Etc.

I don't think that's been the case in recent years, if anything ,I believe they think fan boys will be there regardless. I think the idea recently was to get the movie fan, the Image reader, and other non-traditional readers (although never really kids for some reason). The only fan boy uprising was the Comicsgate crowd which, as it continued, you could see that they taking it to a personal level on creators. I think that C.B. Cebulski is tasked with trying to pull that pendulum back from how far it swung to the "Let's Change Everything" era under Axel Alonso. I, personally, feel X-Men Elsewhen by John Byrne would be a great move in that direction. Let newer fans have Morrison/Whedon/Brubaker/Fraction/Aaron/Bendis' version of the X-Men, and let fans of a smaller cast enjoy an X-Men book by a legendary creator.

Honestly, the need to read 50 zillion books to know what is going on, turned me off a long time ago.  I think it was mainly at Marvel, but admit I could be wrong and it plagued DC just as much.  I guess Crisis was continuity dogma gone crazy?