A reaction to the DC Comics reboot

[andrewducker]

Comments

[tysolna]

This.

I grew up with the 1970s version of Wonder Woman (in German translation), then switched to the original comics post-Crisis. I loved the George Pérez run, and even used it in academical context as an example of how a comic book heroine can be portrayed. I followed the book through Infinite Crisis and into the 2006 re-launch. Then I moved to the UK, and after the move didn't get around to catching up with the title.
The other day, I picked up #1 of the new run. I did not recognize any of the things that, to me, made Wonder Woman.

So yeah, I'm with Lucy.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

I just don't get this whole relaunch / reboot / reinvent every few years malarkey. Or rather, I do. But create some new damn characters, damn it.

[andrewducker]

If people wanted new characters they'd go elsewhere, where plenty of people have new characters for them to read about. They want the characters they know and love. People want their Batman, not some guy they've never heard of.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

So then why reboot? So the same story can be told all over again?

[andrewducker]

Every so often the continuity gets tied in so many knots and contradictions that they clear everything out and start again.

At least, that's how it started - nowadays it more seems to be about being able to sell lots of issues because it generates publicity.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

Well yeah, that -- publicity and sell more issues.

But it seems to me there is a conflict between wanting new stories that create new things (and thus produce contradictions and whatever) and wanting the same old familiar story over again. (Which touches on what I think you posted not long ago about Hollywood wanting the contradiction of new and exciting but familiar and bankable, which applies to the music and fiction industries too, and seems inevitable).

Personally, if the new Doctor Who in 2005 had been a reboot I'd have been really annoyed with it. RTD was reasonably clever in the way he handled it by making it a faux-reboot (no TimeLords, no Gallifrey, everything to explain fresh to a new companion) which worked for both newbies and hardcode alike I think. But then DW is a kids show and doesn't care for continuity that much (isn't it three different explanations of the Titanic? Or some historical event at any rate). Maybe comic fans are just too... nerdy ;)

[andrewducker]

Dr Who is fascinating in the way it deals with canon/continuity:
http://teatimebrutality.blogspot.com/2009/07/canon-and-sheep-shit-why-we-fight.html
http://www.paulcornell.com/2007/02/canonicity-in-doctor-who.html

But it seems to me there is a conflict between wanting new stories that create new things (and thus produce contradictions and whatever) and wanting the same old familiar story over again.

Of course there is. And it's the same conflict between new reader and old readers, and keeping both of them on board. Or to put it another way - there was a new Sherlock Holmes movie a couple of years ago, with Robert Downey Jr in it. Would it have sold as many tickets if it had been the same movie, except not Sherlock Holmes?

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

Holmes.

that's an excellent point. I probably wouldn't have cared if it wasn't Holmes [I am fond of Guy Richie, so would have watched it eventually...]

on reflection the film didn't feel remotely like I expected, and that's probably a good thing. Still, the core remained. It was probably closer to the A. C. Doyle stories than most other versions.

the problem with the DC reboot seems to be dicking with characters for the hell of it, rather than returning to roots to clear things up - like Batman Year One did.

[NB. I don't read any core DC comics, so this is pure speculation based on interweb noise]

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

Three different versions of Atlantis and its destruction.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

Ah, that'll be it. Thanks!

[andrewducker]

Aaaand the numbers are in. Putting the name of an identifiable character on a movie adds 35% to the viewing numbers*. That's why they don't invent new ones.


*based on a poll of my friends and random people on the internets.

[ajr.livejournal.com]

One of the big complaints about comics, in terms of why more people don't start reading them, is that big issue numbers and convoluted backstories are off-putting. "Oh, I'd quite like to read Superhero-Guy Man, but it's been running so long and has so many different series that I don't know where to start, and I'm worried I won't understand it all." So this here relaunch is DCs big plan to clear the boards and give everyone nice, easy jumping-on points. And get some massive publicity while they're at it.

They don't create new characters because new characters don't sell. Which sucks, massively, but it turns out people want the characters they know, not ones they've never heard of.

[doubtingmichael.livejournal.com]

Yes, indeed. I have been getting more and more fed up with and bored with DC Comics over the last few years, as they have focused harder and harder on a single limited vision. They think they can sell comics to one specific audience, and they don't care about any other market - possibly because they think all the others are lost causes.

Unfortunately, they are fixated on Warren Ellis - who's good, but does one particular thing well. Now they're doing lame imitations of "edgy", "dark" comics, without any of Ellis's actual anger. The output is utterly soulless.

I miss Young Heroes in Love.

[andrewducker]

Which makes this nicely ironic:
http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=13333

[doubtingmichael.livejournal.com]

Ironic, sure, but not surprising. Ellis writes edgy and dark because that's what he wants to do creatively. Dan Didio thinks only of target markets.

I am rather annoyed that they've broken up Superman and Lois Lane as well. A few years ago, there was a heavy wave of comics couples being broken up - often by the woman being killed messily - and I was very unhappy about it. I want there to be comics characters in steady relationships. Superman's was one of the few to survive that round. (Reed and Susan Richards did, but between them Marvel and DC disposed of Sue and Ralph Dibny, Spiderman and Mary Jane, Hawkman and Hawkgirl, the Wally West Flash, and more.)

[andrewducker]

There seems to be this belief amongst writers that you can't have drama once people are in a couple - that it turns you from exciting people who do things into settled couples who never leave home.

It's a massive shame.