I can't remember how Alan Moore's Rann was consistent with the miniseries's, I just remember reading that.

IMP.

About how many other characters can we say the same?

Well, there are some characters who've become better than when originally conceived.

Apparently Gail Simone improved Catman dramatically.

Christopher Chance (HUMAN TARGET) as put together by Peter Milligan.

Grant Morrison ANIMAL MAN. Still the best thing he ever did in comics.

I'd say Wolfman's take on the Teen Titans, though maybe he simply altered the entire concept to suit him.

It could be argued that Denny O'Neil's THE QUESTION either improved or destroyed a great character. To this day I really can't decide, as I'm a sucker for stories where a brutal guy has to change or die. What if he can't? That's an interesting sub-text of O'Neil's Question series.

SANDMAN MYSTERY THEATRE, to me, seriously updated Wesley Dodds while keeping him firmly in place in time. LOVE that series. Top five all time for me (post-1970 or so).

And I think you definitely have to add John Byrne and Frank Miller's respective work on Wolverine's look and character, which altered him into a phenomenon.

All this to say, most characters are as great as they are (most of the big names), while b-list characters can be taken up and improved dramatically. I guess I always thought Moore was doing that with SWAMP THING.

JSA might have a touch of this, as far back as Roy Thomas' run on it. And James Robinson came up with a Hawkman I really enjoyed, but I never picked up the other incarnations of the series so I can't say how different Carter Hall really is.

Unfortunately, the thing about this "improvement" writer cockery, though it can be outstanding (STARMAN and the Gentleman Ghost come to mind as well), the idea has spread to the big names, as indicated. Changes made to Spider-Man that are more than arrogant dismissals of what the character represents.

I've always thought, myself, that the big name titles keep a status quo of excellence, a formula, like Spider-Man (he's a young guy with super powers, he lives with his kindly aunt who knows nothing of it, he fights for good as he's feared by the populace and JJJ's newspaper, he has crushes on beautiful girls but he screws it up, and villains sometimes get the best of him until he comes up with a solution, and even then his bad luck will run true...this is as perfect a formula for a Marvel superhero comic ever), and you leave it in the hands of capable creative teams who understand they're on a flagship title that brings in new readers while sustaining old.

And then you have the secondary, b-list characters, like Power Man and Iron Fist, Doom Patrol, Metal Men, where you give a set of creators a little carte blanche to take chances. Not "Morrison Doom Patrol" type free reign, but push the limits of what comics are allowed creatively. You don't HAVE to have Moon Knight cutting off an opponent's face, but if you do, you state very clearly that's what's in the content on the cover.

All this seems simple to me. While the world is run by PC twattle, the comics world is rife with giggling adolescent "rebellion". Against what? Against the history of the medium and its more famous creators...that's about it. It's all the inbreeding in the comics world which is killing it. Somebody needs to open a window.

Well when I briefly looked through John Byrnes F.A.Q. there were lots of terms he'd made up and assumed it was referring to one of those. When I learnt it wasn't and was given a context I realised it was being used in a derogatory against my post. Should I then have gone to the bother of googling an insult just to find out how I was being insulted. And if anyone was using that defence it was Emery in the first place. His objection against Moore being what others did in his wake.

How can you accuse ME of the Chewbacca defense after submitting  "Blame Prometheus for the local neighborhood arson" to suggest that Moore's has no rational responsibility for any damage to the tone of super hero comics and later went on to claim that there was no damage anyway ? And if you don't understand something that sounds like a bit of pop culture or a refernce to a pervasive meme then goole it in quotes. That is standard procedure for people with web access.

It's how I found out what IMWAN was.

Moore clearly had a direct hand in deconstructing superhero comics himself

Yep. And that's what I just said.

And as such Moore is only to 'blame' for the work he did.

Yep. That's ALSO what I just said. Are you even reading my responses here? However I was responding to someone who said I should blame Moore at all. I think the truth is that people here are actually mad at me for blaming Moore for the work he did.

Just because it was popular and other people thought they could do it as well isn't Moores fault.

It's partly Moore's fault. Otherwise really noone is responsible for anything because you can divide almost anything into small chunks and then suggest that noone has enough chunks to make them responsible. Also Moore never asked his immitators to stop. He really didn't stop doing it himself when it was floated that his work was harmful. He accepted the accolades of his immitators and tgheir supporters and seems to have bought into the idea that he was ushering in an age of important comics that would take their place beside film and lietarture as mainstream forms of culture.. The great crass-ening and "r-rating" of super hero comics content is still somewhat his responsibility.

You don't like my example? Fine. But I really don't think in this case that the person who set the example has any responsibility for the people who copied him.

Why is that? Do you not understand why I don;t like your example. Do you feel that my dislike of your example is purley arbitrary and emotional and my ciriticism of it is unfair or invadid? Also you seemed to be trying to suggest here that Moore was not even responsible for his own deconstructive stories now which conflicts with your agreement before.

If blame is to be apportioned, and I don't think it is,

See? From what can Moore derive blamelessness?

 then look to the people who thought to follow suit rather than do their own thing, blame the editors who either instigated it or didn't veto it, blame the audience who biought it.

I'm not sure why you think I don't ALSO blame them? Seriously. Where is this assumption of yours that ONLY Moore is to blamed coming from? Is it because I am focusing on Moore in a thread that is mostly about Moore and the negative aspects one of his particular works?

And anyway what damage did it do?

Look around you. Look at recent superhero comics in their shrunken DRM salesspace. Heck read Alan Moore's quotes on his perception of the damage it did.

There's still whizz bang, bright and light, positive, optomistic comics about superheroes produced in abundance. 

Go ahead and define "abundance" for me because I doubt we will agree on that term's meaning. Just because you are happy with the smoke coated Lunadry room remaining doesn't establish that no damage was done. Heck compose a nice fat list of whizz bang, bright and light, positive, optomistic super hero comics  for me would ya? Maybe I haven't noticed them on the stands in their abundance! And then lets compare that list to the super hero comics available to see what kind of abundance ratio we really have in today's market.

Also, please don't waste time with rolling out the usual easy to think of comic board distraction arguments such as books like "Marvel Age Spider-Man!" (how many books like that are around?) Read old comics! ( I do. How does that afgect what comics are out NOW?) Read Archie!(Hah. Hah. That just gets funnier everytime I hear it. Is Archie truthfully known for his super heroics? )

I am not trying to put words into your mouth here but I am trying to avoid having the dicussion fly off into the usual limbo by listing what I've often heard in the past on various other boards so you can anticipate what my response to them will be. It is intended as a short cut around maybe six or so posts worth of going back and forth.

I am willing to accept that you can improve and build on a character. I think however that this is often an error prone and pragmatic process requiring adding and subtracting things as time goes on. When a character is sufficiently blank then adding seems like a good idea. Adding conflicting elements seems less wise.

I have a hard time accepting though that the goal of improvement should be a huge alteration in the character that results in them having an almost reversal of their nature ( Marvel Man rethought as Miracle Man, Green Lantern---> Green Lantern with MONDO feet of clay-->Parallax-->Spectre-->Green Lantern, HankHall--> Hawk-->Monarch-->Extant) or an eclipsing of their original status(Swamp Thing--->Plant-->Plant Elemental--->Planet Elemental)  or where they end up being a different character from the original and probably could have been introduced alongside the original without switching aspects.

So what I'm saying is some thought should be taken to see if additions and subtractions are clarifying, or just muddying the water with trivia and mundanity, or tacking things on for a short term effect(Kitty Pryde is now a Ninja!) with no thought to the future. Also a change should be evaluated as to whether it will most likely be destructive or constructive in terms of having others write that character. Will it amplify the character or just mute and dampen it?

Editors do not seem to exert a lot of responsible control over this. In fact they seem to be rather prone to whoring the character out to a big name to produce shocks enough to temporarily spike sales or just rolling the dice and letting creators try anything and then letting the next cross over or revamp effort to clear things up somewhere down the road.

Why is that the traditional litmus test? The implication seems to be that it must be the guys who created the character {who got it right}, but I can't for the life of me see why that should be so."

Hear hear

Actually the real point seems to be that if someone tries something new and it doesn't work, the reason is because you should NEVER try anything new.

" Me too? " C'mon. Jump in and speak your mind.

You know the Prometheus comparison? This one's worse. I feel like Al Pacino in Gadfather 3 when reading certain posts.But to move on.

There were several examples that sprung to mind of comic book characters that were improved by others work.but Chad listed some of the ones I came up with. Others would be Gaimans Sandman but once you get past the trappings of the Dodds Sandman and the Matrix Supergirl who I prefer to the original.

Reading up on the thread - I believe the Peanuts strips that are being reprinted were chosen by the creator specifically to be the ones repeated. Prepared to be wrong.

And doesn't a work for hire arrangement, like most major superheroes were created under, mean that the creator doesn't have any say on what happens next? To an extent it doesn't matter if the creator disagrees or not when it's not creator owned.

                                      *******************************

Only if you make the huge assumption that Charles Schulz entered into a work for hire arrangement with United Features Syndicate in 1950 and then was unable to make any kind of better deal(s) with them over the course of the next 49 years.

Remember, in the 1960's, Peanuts was right up there with the Beatles as a cultural phenomenon.  "Happiness is A Warm Gun"- John Lennon lifted that title from a gun magazine; the magazine itself was riffing on "Happiness is a Warm Puppy", one of several top selling paperback Peanuts books that Sparky produced aside from the comic strip. Now, throw in all the money that Schulz was making for UFS on the merchandising.

Do you really think that when the time(s) came to renegotiate his contract, United Features said "no, this punk is asking for too much. Let's dump him and bring in Johnny Hart"?

Of course not. Lightning in a bottle, man... in strip terms, Peanuts is the Beatles. 

All of which is to say that no, comic strip syndicates don't necessarily deal with their creators in the same way as comic book companies. Which might be why several of the greats~ I'm thinking of Kirby & Wood with "Skymasters"~ were always looking to create successful comic strips. My understanding is that a comic strip gig was like the grail in those days.