I never understood this. Titles like “Batman” and “Green Lantern” just kept on trucking as though there was no break in continuity… And other titles completely started over. (“Shazam,” for example, was an entirely new origin story, but “Red Lantern Corps” presumes the reader is familiar with the last decade of Geoff John’s earlier work… Makes no sense…) I just gave up trying to understand it. And I stopped reading Marvel entirely after AvX.
And to elaborate on my earlier post… For big shared universes like Marvel and DC, their continuity is their biggest strength and also their biggest weakness. The weakness is that it eventually becomes a straightjacket. The writers are constrained by the fact that they can’t irrevocably “break” the universe or the characters.
This is precisely why I prefer stories like “Sandman” and “Preacher” that have a definite ending and aren’t expected to last for decade after decade.
I’ve dipped into a few Superman titles in the last year and in one Lois betraying his identity to the world based a weak bag of nonsense rationale was so offensive to the history of the character and her strength I just dropped it again. It’s dead to me.
Likewise Superman’s outfit being jeans, a muscle T-shirt and work bootsreally doesn’t make it either. I get you need to make changes but lighting Clark Kent on fire? That’s IMO an absolutely essential part of the Superman identity and dynamic.
On one level it almost parodies Kevin Smith’s story aboutproducer Jon Peters take on Superman as being “too faggy”
I suppose the idea is that a “structured” look works better in the eye of current audiences (accustomed to compression garments) than just longjohns. Face it, many “classic” superhero costumes as portrayed in the comics are only reproducible IRL as bodypaint plus trunks for the gentlemen. Supes may not need armor but he does need an outfit that won’t bunch down or ride up in the middle of the action. Though of course the artists just don’t know where to stop, it should not need that much segmenting, IMO.
(And Superman’s got to have a cape. He’s in fact*** the ***one who has nothing to worry about with a cape. Because, to rebut Edna, if Mr. Kent’s cape snags on or is grabbed by something, it’s going to be the “something” that gets obliterated, not him.)
Only a poor writer sees continuity as a weakness. A good one makes it dance on its head.
I really liked what DC was doing (the 52 limited series) around the time of its reboot…so that was just stupid.
Not quite sure about the current state of Marvel, but I really liked the build-up. Very well done. Thor and Hyperion (Right?) going out against the Beyonders? Top notch.
And on a deifferent note…I have to laugh how endless reboots are now PART of Legion mythology. Which in my mind ended with…err…End of an Era.
This is a silly statement of dogma, as silly as “using curse words indicates s lack of creativity.” Sometimes continuity helps a story sometimes it interferes. A single 90-minute movie can make an absolute hash of any logical continuity but most people won’t notice.
I just want to be the contrarian and say I have enjoyed large chunks of the New 52. It gave me a jumping on point to start buying titles regularly as compared to just “famous” storylines I had heard about. So on that point I think it worked as intended.
I respect your opinion…I’m mostly basing this on Alan Moore using continuity as a strength and John Byrne…who I actually usually like…crying about how continuity impeded him and then just bringing back the Doom Patrol willy nilly.
Marvel’s Secret Wars event that just ended turned out to basically be an opportunity for their writers to gleefully use and ignore continuity as they saw fit. Some of the Secret Wars series didn’t quite gel, but some of the others were crazy fun. Thors as a police procedural with different Thor versions as the lawmen - including Frog Thor as medical examiner - was a hoot. In the end, they put the toys back in the box, maybe incorporating some of the best ideas.
It was a fun, innovative approach to continuity and to writing comics that DC just hasn’t shown in years. DC occasionally had some flashes of innovation - often Morrison’s work, it seemed - but seem too constrained to experiment and push the envelope. I used to love DC, but they just haven’t been having fun in a long time.
His run on Jonah Hex was magnificent, and his current work on Harley Quinn is hilarious. I think he might be just about the best writer in comics today.
I think that’s only half of the truth. Continuity becomes a problem when a poor writer feels the need to demolish everything that came before OR when a poor writer adds something that sorely needs demolishing. When somebody writes something terrible, I feel no need to waste a ton of effort trying to mash it into something slightly less terrible - much better to just cut out the cancer and be done with it.
That’s one of the things I’m enjoying currently about Marvel. The powers that be seem to be willing to deal with silliness and if the fans love it enough, embrace it. Squirrel Girl’s omnipotence was never supposed to be in continuity but so many fans said “But…we love it!” that now it is. Ditto for Nextwave–more and more of it seems to be creeping into continuity because it’s great. (Who doesn’t want to see Boom-Boom deal with the trauma of almost being stuffed inside Fin Fang Foom’s underpants?)
DC (and I blame Jim Lee) seems to have learned the wrong lesson from the '90s: the problem wasn’t the pouches and big guns (those were just lame), it’s that comics as a whole lost all of their sense of wonder, adventure and fun. Outside of that Bizarro mini-series, I haven’t had fun reading a DC comic in about 5 years.*
*Possible exception for Snyder’s Batman.
It’s been about that long since Jimmy Olsen #1, (Spencer, Pinna, da Silva.) This is a total romp! The art is crisp and clean, and the writing is snazzy, with a “Josh Whedon” style of flippancy. It’s one of the single best comic books I have ever, ever read. I went back and bought four copies, to give to friends.
Trust me! Find it! If you don’t love it, PM me and I’ll buy it from you!
I think I’m reading two of DC’s titles right now. Starfire… Justice League 3001 … oh, and Superman : Lois and Clark. So, three. Before the New 52, I was reading all of them. Immediately after, I was reading 30+ - trying to give the new continuity a fair shake.
Now, 3. One of which has nothing to do with current continuity, another of which stars characters from the previous continuity, and the third of which just doesn’t interact with the New 52, though I suppose it can nominally exist within its confines.
Been reading a lot more Marvel, but they’re about to do Civil War 2, so I’m going to drop most of that.
If they reboot DC to be, essentially, 'We’re sorry for Flashpoint and the last four years. We fucked up. Here’s Justice League International, the Legion, and Barbara Gordon as Oracle again." Then I’ll be all over it.
They’re redoing the series where Captain America was too anti-American and/or stupid to know that if you don’t like a law passed by congress, that the way to deal with it is to go to Matt Murdock or Jen Walters or someone and have a friendly judge slap a stay of execution on it until it got to the Supreme Court, buying time and…oh…being legal…rather than to grab a bunch of kids and turn them (literally) into terrorists? The one where the writers couldn’t decide if the law was “If you have super-powers, you’re drafted” or “If you want to crime-fight with super-powers, you have to be licensed”? That Civil War? Gah. Blech.
Also–Flashpoint ended (and was very, VERY clear about it) that Barry remembered the pre-Flashpoint Universe and that Batman knew about it as well. Has that ever been touched upon since?
Jeez… I was curious about how Superman’s been revamped throughout the years and found this Wiki page.
As far as I can tell, the revamps started in 1985 (John Byrne). Then 1992 (his death), 1994 (long hair), 1996 (becomes electromagnetic energy), 2004 (updated origin), 2005 (Grant Morrison does his own thing), 2006 (Superboy Prime alters reality), 2007 (another updated origin), 2011 (new 52), 2015 (just cuz).
Civil War 2 will apparently be a futurecrime (a la Minority Report) storyline. One hero kills another hero who has been (infallibly?) predicted to cause some sort of bad thing to occur. Half of the heroes support acting against the predicted future crime, the other half don’t like punishing someone for something they haven’t done yet. It sorta looks like the sides are Iron Man vs. Captain Marvel - except Iron Man might not be written as a facist idiot this time around (guess that means Carol will be).
Sadly, reboots have got nothing to do with maintaining a realistic passing of time, which has never even been tried in any of the big two in any way, to begin with, and a lot to do with the temporary increase in sales they get from fans anxious for a number 1 issue.
I think we kinda haveta count some point in the '60s as a soft revamp, since that’s when they officially said yeah, those stories where he made his public debut as a guy who could leap tall buildings but not fly? Where he was active during WWII, and hung out with the Justice Society, and fought the Ultra-Humanite? Well, those stories all happened – but that’s a different guy on a different Earth, not the one who now stars in the comics with an I-Was-Superboy-In-Smallville backstory.
