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Robbie Parry
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 June 2007
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 12186
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| Posted: 30 January 2016 at 1:21pm | IP Logged | 1
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I was browsing some 80s Batman covers earlier (to share on my Facebook page). I noticed that, during the late 80s, when Batman had taken on Jason Todd, the BATMAN title was subtitled "The New Adventures".
I also noticed that many titles, including some in Britain, adopted cover phrases like "A Bold New Direction" or something similar.
Wouldn't the above two examples be far superior to this constant renumbering and relaunching?
I bought WOLVERINE #144 around 1998/99. Since that time, I have lost count of the number of #1s for Wolverine. And every time I turn around, it seems various Marvel titles have relaunched with a new #1. Even some British reprint titles have been renumbering/relaunching.
When I was buying titles, as a kid, which had clocked up 400 or 500 issues (or more!), the sense of history was awe-inspiring, as I thought about the fact my stepfather may have been reading those titles when he was a kid. Although high numbers don't always equate to quality, the sense of history existed.
It's not really about history or high numbers, though. Constant relaunches are boring. Renumbering as often as I have hot dinners is boring, too. What's the point of constant renumbering? Why not just abolish numbers altogether and have a simple cover date (i.e. February 2016) on each cover?
Rather than relaunching, renumbering and rebooting every five minutes, perhaps a subtitle like "The New Adventures" or phrases such as "A Bold New Direction" may be more suitable.
Any thoughts?
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 30 January 2016 at 1:51pm | IP Logged | 2
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Unfortunately, the target for these shenanigans is the idiots who buy anything with a "1" on the cover. On NEXT MEN I started doing "series of miniseries," with the arc titles on the cover. Dark Horse suggested we also number them, "1of4," "2of4," etc. I thought that was foolish, but sure enough the sales ticked up with each "first issue."And dropped with the second!
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Shaun Barry
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 08 December 2008
Location: United States
Posts: 6904
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| Posted: 30 January 2016 at 3:03pm | IP Logged | 3
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(Robbie, just for ha-ha's, I went to a comic website and tried typing in "Wolverine #1"... got 11 PAGES worth of examples. At 50 different covers (or variants) for each page! Yeeeeeg.)
Remember the good 'ol days when a "bold new direction" simply meant a new creative team?
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Robert Bradley
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 20 September 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 4880
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| Posted: 30 January 2016 at 3:19pm | IP Logged | 4
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Why not just date them like magazines and then you can always give a storyline title and issue number as needed?
For instance -
Fantastic Four - March, 1966 Galactus Trilogy 1 of 3
The Avengers - November, 1971 Kree-Skrull War 5 of 9
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 30 January 2016 at 3:22pm | IP Logged | 5
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How about the better old days when a "bold new direction" wasn't needed, because the audience turned over often enough that the material was alway "new" to most of them? When I started reading Superman and Batman adventures in the late Fifties the characters were so little changed from what they had been ten or fifteen years before that "Annuals" could be produced entirely from reprints of those past years and I -- as well as most readers, I suspect -- was none the wiser. Virtually all of the moves made in the last forty years -- since I got into the Biz, basically -- have been based on resignation and reduced expectations. "We've lost the ability to bring in new readers, so we have to keep suckering the ones we have into buying more."
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Robbie Parry
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 June 2007
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 12186
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| Posted: 30 January 2016 at 3:27pm | IP Logged | 6
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You know, what drives me crazy is when non-fans (or lapsed fans) ask me complex questions, i.e., "Rob, I want to get back into Superman, but do I need to be familiar with INFINITE CRISIS? Can you recommend the graphic novels I need to read to catch up?" You know what I mean.
Decades ago, it was simple. "Rob, recommend me a book." Simple reply: "Batman and Web of Spider-Man are good. You've seen the cartoons, right? Pick up the books."
Now it feels like explaining something in-depth and takes the fun away. A few years ago, I said to my friend, "Don't bother." He had been asking about various CRISIS events and which version of Superman's origin was official. :/
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Peter Martin
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 March 2008
Location: Canada
Posts: 15950
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| Posted: 30 January 2016 at 4:12pm | IP Logged | 7
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When it comes to continuity, there is a right way to do things and a wrong way to do things. The right way is to determine what is core to the property and quickly summarise it for anyone new. Then you move on to an exciting new adventure.
Watching the resurrected X-Files last week was a decent example of how to do it right, I thought. My girlfriend was up for watching it and then told me she had never watched a single episode before. A lot of water has gone under the bridge as far as Mulder and Scully are concerned, but the show did a good job, I thought, of giving a brief precis of what you needed to know at the beginning of that first new episode (and at the start of the second, just in case anyone was jumping on then). This is what the show is about... And here we go!
Every comic should be like that. Two or three lines to bring you on board if you are new. No one left out.
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Andrew Hess
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
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| Posted: 30 January 2016 at 4:24pm | IP Logged | 8
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Another good example of the "bold new direction" without renumbering is the "Kryptonite Nevermore" cover by Neal Adams: big bold cover, has the feel of an event, and even says "Number 1" in big boldness to get the point across. And the story itself offers a bunch of changes to the mythos! But there's no change in numbering, no change in realities, no actual change to the character himself.
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Conrad Teves
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 28 January 2014
Location: United States
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| Posted: 30 January 2016 at 9:02pm | IP Logged | 9
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Scroll through the top 1000 best-selling comics from 2015 and look how many have the number "1" on them. http://www.comichron.com/monthlycomicssales/2015.html
Of those "No.1's" look how few actually constitute a new property.
As I see it, the first problem is people commodifying the object itself. When I was a kid, the number on the cover was merely a reference point. I cared about what was in the book. If someone asked me how many comics I own, I'd tell them I don't know (and I don't). I buy them to read. I literally have never bought a comic just for collecting purposes. I suppose that means I'm not really the target audience...
The second problem is the PTB being chicken to try something new. You can't recapture the creative avalanche of the 60's by trotting out 60's characters as your only approach. Not that anybody appears to be trying to recapture that...
My favorite thing about old comics isn't how much they're worth, but how they smell. That pulp paper smell is like my favorite odor in the world.
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Trevor Thompson
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| Posted: 31 January 2016 at 3:12am | IP Logged | 10
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When I started reading Superman and Batman adventures in the late Fifties the characters were so little changed from what they had been ten or fifteen years before that "Annuals"
*****************************
Marvel Tales. I didn't know they were reprints until I was much older. I should have guessed from the characters' fashion but being a child I didn't quite cotton on.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 31 January 2016 at 6:32am | IP Logged | 11
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You know, what drives me crazy is when non-fans (or lapsed fans) ask me complex questions, i.e., "Rob, I want to get back into Superman, but do I need to be familiar with INFINITE CRISIS? Can you recommend the graphic novels I need to read to catch up?" You know what I mean.•• A lot of destructive terms have worked their way into the lexicon of comics, and one of the worst is "jumping-on point." When I was still doing cons, this was a question I heard too often, and with increasing frequency: "What's a good jumping-on pint?" In my own case, I could answer "the current issue," but that was true for fewer and fewer titles all the time."Writing for the trade" -- another destructive concept -- pretty much put the final nail in that coffin, as lazy writers more and more treated each issue as a literal "chapter" which afforded no ingress point to a potential new reader. The very notion that a comic could not be read without first absorbing a dairy chain of previous issues and titles -- what else is run that way?? But it's the fanzine mentality in full bloom. The notion that the books are aimed exclusively at the established readers -- preaching to the choir -- and if a potential new reader is not already well versed in the lore... Well, one writer put it in so many words, saying anyone who was not familiar with the backstory had no business reading his current work. Completely forgetting, of course, that there was a time when even he was new to reading comics -- and when they were completely accessible to everyone!!
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
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| Posted: 31 January 2016 at 6:34am | IP Logged | 12
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When I started reading Superman and Batman adventures in the late Fifties the characters were so little changed from what they had been ten or fifteen years before that "Annuals"***************************** Marvel Tales. I didn't know they were reprints until I was much older. I should have guessed from the characters' fashion but being a child I didn't quite cotton on. •• When Chris and I were doing UNCANNY X-MEN we would occasionally get letters suggesting we "do" a MARVEL TALES kind of book with our merry mutants. And the writers of those letters clearly meant producing a new book every month, which was clearly what they believed MARVEL TALES to be.
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