I don’t think the ideas are the problem. Audiences in America and around the world have shown that they’ll gleefully embrace well told superhero stories in movies and television to the tune of millions of dollars. The problem is the outmoded medium of comic books. There was a thread earlier this year where the question was posed as to why people didn’t read them. Dozens of people responded citing the cost, the immaturity of the medium itself, the delayed satisfaction of monthly storytelling, and limitations of a shared universe among other things.
I would really… REALLY like to believe that people could once again embrace the mythic qualities of Superman, the innate do-gooder , or Batman as the pinnacle of human determination in the format of a monthly comic book. I just don’t think it’s gonna happen.
The Buffy and Angel comics are stories told with an eye toward collections and GN’s. And I would dare say the monthly books aren’t purchased by fans far outside the comics community.
If DC could release a self contained Superman story that ran 200 pages once every 3 to 6 months for $15 or $20 I really think they might find a new audience. But it’s not gonna happen with rebooting, (or tweaking), the monthly comics once every couple of years. This reboot is meant to capture more of a dying market, made up of people like you and I Czarcasm. And people like us won’t last forever.
Restarting the numbering (and then, more often than not, changing it back again) has always bugged the Hell out of me. But my comic collection’s aesthetic symmetry and ease of filing doesn’t make Marvel or DC a dime. Predictably high sales for books with “1st Issue!!!” splashed on the cover does.
When it comes to attracting new fans, I think it’s far from obvious that the problem is convoluted back stories. The new fans aren’t even aware of how convoluted the backstories are.
If they want to make comics simpler to follow, how about more self-contained stories and yes Universe-Spanning Mega-Crises, where everything changes for the 7000th time.
As a lifelong comic reader, I have to remind myself that us fans started devouring comics (at 12c a pop)… because we didn’t have videogames or PCs or good TV…
I’m all for it. As a lapsed comics reader, I’ve long thought they should reboot all titles every 10 years or so to avoid getting bogged down in continuity problems.
The execution could suck, of course, but if they present entertaining stories with modestly tweaked versions of their familiar heroes it could be a breath of fresh air. I might actually read some stories if I didn’t have to figure out who’s no longer dead and whether someone was a blue lantern and which version of Aquaman I’m seeing.
I’m getting a little sick of DC doing a semi-reboot every two or three years. In the last three, there’s been a reboot a year, basically.
Not a total and complete one, but they’ve certainly been trying for it.
And, of course, it’s all being redesigned by Jim Lee. That’s certainly a way to make all the designs look fresh and not 1990s at all.
This is so true. The previous attempts have been efforts to straighten out convoluted story lines, but perhaps too many of them are too complicated to straighten out at all. Time to start over entirely.
Green Lantern-One color, one core, one mission.
Batman-A man at his peak, perhaps with a young protege.
Hawkman-Alien who uses ancient weaponry to defeat modern criminals.
Wonder Woman-Lone representative from an ancient culture.
Superman-Sole survivor from a doomed planet, with powers far beyond ours.
Martian Manhunter-Sole survivor from a doomed civilization, with the power to change shape and limited super abilities.
Teen Titans-A group of sidekicks that get together to solve crimes.
Oh lordy, the Marvel “New Universe” comics were terrible.
These came out when I was in high school. I was at the height of my comic-book fandom then, and even to my 14-year-old mind I thought these titles were lousy. Story, art, character design: everything was bad, bad, bad.
Starting a new, simpler universe was a great idea on paper, but the execution in the “New Universe” titles was horrible. Err… no offense to any of the creators should you ever find and read this thread.
There you go. One of the main things that made me turn away from comics back in the 80’s was that I grew weary of stories that dragged out over multiple issues and that wandered around through several titles. I will still sometimes pick up a one-off; I really loved the Elseworlds back when DC used to do those. Once in a while, I’ll also buy a trade paperback that collects all the installments of a story under one cover. I have no interest, though, in waiting a month between installments, especially when experience tells me that some of the installments are going to be nothing but exposition and filler.
Lord, yes. The Legion and the Flash, in particular, both of which have ridiculously contorted backstories.
As another lapsed comics fan, I’m particularly interested to see what, if anything, will be done with the Golden Age characters such as the JSA. I haven’t read comics in over a decade, though, so I don’t know what’s been happening with them in the intervening years.
They’re too expensive. I was reading and collecting comics back when the Uncanny X-Men was in the late 100’s and early 200’s. A storyline would take…what, eight months? At current prices that would put it at like $35-$40 or so.
I can buy two two-hour movies that will keep me busy for three or four hours - much longer than it would take me to read those eight comic books. I could buy four paperback novels (at today’s IMO insane prices) that would keep me busy for a month of my free time. Which is actually a lie because I have so little free time it’d be more like six months. But back when I did have free time…
The art has to be pretty fucking spectacular to justify the price. Or, it needs to be a well-loved niche (say, Knights of the Dinner Table) that isn’t available anywhere else for someone to have me give them $4 a month for 32 pages of content.
Then, of course, there’s the really bad gouging where they work in crossovers where you need both so that you can actually get the full story. Or one in foil that costs more because this is the Most Special Issue Evah!
Economically, they’re just pretty much not worth it, IMO.
The information on this right now is that it’s not exactly a reboot, it’s a sidestep. Major continuity events of the DC Universe will still have happened. It’s just that the Justice League will have had stupid looking collars when it did, apparently. Some characters will be getting retcons to their backstory. Most will be more or less the same.
Oh, dear Og, yes please! I was horrified a few years back to learn that my favorite hero had become part of the Rainbow Brite Lantern Corps. Restarting with a purer concept (and preferably without a vulnerability to any old yellow object) would actually get me to buy a few issues and try it out.
In that case, this is going to suck. As others have noted, way too many of those major continuity events are themselves about the convoluted story lines, or include crap that needs to be eradicated once and for all.