| Posted: 03 June 2012 at 6:43am | IP Logged | 2
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WAY too complicated! How it was done was best. A clean start. No need for readers to have ANY experience of "what had gone before". No need to explain elapsed time. No need to worry about anal-retentive fanboys. Nothing to cause even a moments hesitation for a potential new reader. Just jump in with a whole bunch of new characters and say IT STARTS HERE.====================== Well, when I said "some later archaeologist", I meant much later, like, 20-30 years later. I agree that a fresh start at the time was probably best, but It could have been done without inventing new identities. Like a reverse "Dragnet", the names remained the same, but everything else has changed. •• I really don't see what could have been gained by the Silver Age Flash being effectively as we were introduced to him, except that his name was "Jay Garrick". DC actually did that with Hawkman, contriving a way for him to be "Carter Hall" in the new version, but it really added nothing to the story. When creating new characters -- even if they are in some way derivative of previously existing ones (in fact, ESPECIALLY then!!) -- the mantra should ever and always be CLEAN AND SIMPLE, CLEAN AND SIMPLE. Open the door to new readers, and don't make them jump thru ANY hoops getting there. Marvel had the same idea. When they brought back old characters, it was either in new forms that completely ignored the previous iteration (the Human Torch, for instance -- as I have noted, when he blazed thru the sky over Central City in FF 1, no one cried out "He's back!") -- or provided a way for the originals to return without the need to invoke parallel worlds (Sub-Mariner, Captain America). CLEAN AND SIMPLE, CLEAN AND SIMPLE! And were there people who wrote in to say "How can Cap have been frozen in 1945, when his comic continued publication thru 1956?" Probably not -- but if there were, you can be sure their letters ended up in the trash, where they belonged. Alas, the influx of fans-turned-pro would not let that last!
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