The Big Picture: Continanity: Rebooted

[Littlejib]

After watching the big picture for a while I decided to go get into comics. The best place for this, and I'm not kidding here, is a library. I walked into mine, and they had a selection of the past 3 years comics for DC and Marval, plus heaps of other graphic novels that I had only heard about. I got Blackest Night and some batman comics, which were part way through the story line, and loved it. Wikipedia caught me up on so much. I also picked up the complete history of the green lantern, that got a bit boring though.

 

[Moeez]

After watching the big picture for a while I decided to go get into comics. The best place for this, and I'm not kidding here, is a library. I walked into mine, and they had a selection of the past 3 years comics for DC and Marval, plus heaps of other graphic novels that I had only heard about. I got Blackest Night and some batman comics, which were part way through the story line, and loved it. Wikipedia caught me up on so much. I also picked up the complete history of the green lantern, that got a bit boring though.

Same, my library has all the comics stacked in Character order, so you'd have the Batman comics and I read all the way from Year One to Dark Knight Returns. Very useful resource!

 

[WolfThomas]

See, I run into this problem constantly, because while I read comics, I don't always have a lot of free time, so I can go months or years between when I read. And, for example, if I pick up Spiderman after a year or two, I find out he's dead and has been replaced by a black Mexican kid. And no, I can't just go "oh, huh, time to start reading from the beginning of this particular series" I have to figure out exactly how this NEW story fits in with the OLD story, and do freaking hours of research just to find out where I need to start reading from.

To be fair that change wasn't in the mainstream universe and it was part of massive step to overhaul a successful franchise (the ultimate line) that had been driven into the ground by an author (Jeph Loeb) who didn't respect any of the previous stuff written (by Mark Millar). Regular Spiderman is untouched and status quo remains god. As we saw from the One More Day debacle, Spiderman will forever remain unmarried and have his identity hiden from the public eye.

For the most part serial comics try to be acessible, while certainly a significant amount of stuff does happen over time, for the most part they try to contain it in each arc. You don't need years of knowledge you just need to know why you're reading the character.

Spoiler: As Lets Be Friends aptly sumarise

But I'll agree what is sometimes called the "The Five Year Rule" http://mightygodking.com/index.php/2010/11/14/the-five-year-rule/ is a problem, stuff that gets introduced into comics that everbody immediately knows it will inevitably get ret-conned out. You pick up a Hulk book and he's red and smart, well that won't last.

Frankly, I think the comic book industry just needs to sit down and establish a 20 year time limit on stories with the same continuity. You can use the same worlds, franchises, e.t.c., but once you hit that 20 year period it's time to end things and start up with something new. 20 years works fairly well, because it allows characters to "age out" of the status quo. For example, Spiderman at 20 can be basically the same guy as he was at 16 or at 30. Maybe he gets a car, or has to worry about making excuses to his boss instead of his teacher, but the same basic guy

Interestingly enough there was a line that tried this style of continuity. Valiant Comics back in the late 80s and early 90s was up there with Marvel and DC for sales. Everything that took place in a comic (except well labelled flashbacks and historic events) took place in the month it was written, time passed in real time, characters aged realistically. There was never any retcons, if something happened it was set in concrete. It only lasted for five years though as Valiant went under with the comic crash of the nineties but it would have been interesting to see if they'd made it to now.

 

[Zetsubou^-^]

that's his real accent? i thought he was doing some type of east coast or Elmer Fudd impression for lols or something. i never even got a hint of it before now. >.> it not that i don't like it, its more like it came so far out of nowhere that it blew my mind...

ot: mostly why i never got too deep into comics. all of them use the multiverse like its bread and butter. i like the marvel movies of late, but im not gonna try and wrap my head around all the past incarnations and how the movies tie to them.

 

[Griffolion]

I'm glad i'm the only one who didn't notice the accent, what's going on there?

 

[octafish]

As long as they reboot Doom Patrol to the full weirdness and Suicide Squad to exactly how it was I'll be happy.

 

[Aptspire]

heh, speaking of DW and continuity...
look up 'River Song'
Not everyone is pleased with that fairly unusual time travel idea

 

[Not Enough Gun]

It doesn't feel like a proper reboot. Everything that happened in Batman continuity did happen but only in a 5 year period? Green Lantern continuity is remaining largely untouched? Superman is the only one that feels like a proper reboot. It like post crisis on Infinite earths, especially with the folding in of the wildstorm universe to the new 52 and the DC characters who made it big in Vertigo making their way back. It feels like house keeping. Tidying everything up, getting rid of the sprawling arcs and threads and making everything simpler and easier to manage until, more likely than not, everything gets out of hand again and we go through this all over again.

 

[WolfThomas]

I'm more pissed with what they've done with the Authority/Stormwatch.

 

[Not Enough Gun]

I'm more pissed with what they've done with the Authority/Stormwatch.

Me too, but they have Paul Cornell writing it and I have the utmost faith in him. He wrote the Doctor Who episodes "Fathers Day" and "Human Nature/Family of Blood" two parter. Also Captain Britain and MI13 and Knight and Squire. Loved those books, very smart writing, good characters and just fun stories. If anyone can do those teams justice, it's him.

 

[LogicNProportion]

I have to ask, what's up with the accent?

Beat me to it. I was hoping the thick Brooklyn would be explained in the post credits.

Dude, that accent was as Boston as JFK and those damn Red Socks.

Regardless, fun episode, as always Bob!

 

[Vortigar]

You can start anywhere.

Exactly. Thank you.

I'm more pissed with what they've done with the Authority/Stormwatch.

Strangely enough as a fan who dropped out after some 50 issues into The Authority, I'm rather interested in picking up the new Stormwatch.


But yeah, did Power Girl get cancelled or is she outside the reboot thing or what?
Universes die around her and she just keeps on living.

I only live on the edge of the major universes and pick up a book here and there so I don't follow the main news.

 

[WolfThomas]

Me too, but they have Paul Cornell writing it and I have the utmost faith in him. He wrote the Doctor Who episodes "Fathers Day" and "Human Nature/Family of Blood" two parter. Also Captain Britain and MI13 and Knight and Squire. Loved those books, very smart writing, good characters and just fun stories. If anyone can do those teams justice, it's him.

I'm well aware of his writing credential "Captain Britain and MI13" is one of my favourite books written and was cut short way too soon.

I wouldn't be annoyed if they'd inserted the Authority and/or Stormwatch right into the DCnU but this new Stormwatch is strange, it's basically replacing JSA (so annyoing two seperate groups of fans) in the history. While at least Midnighter and Apollo are still gay, they're not the adopted parents of Jenny Quantum (it appears the Engineer is), which is kind of a step back. They're weren't just gay characters they were also fully functional parents, which is an exceptionally rare combination in comics.

Spoiler: Also they've given them terrible new costumes, Apollo hass lost his iconic hair and halo and Midnighter looks so...meh. What was wrong did they think someone would mistake him for Batman?

I'm more pissed with what they've done with the Authority/Stormwatch.

Strangely enough as a fan who dropped out after some 50 issues into The Authority, I'm rather interested in picking up the new Stormwatch.

Heh, I never said I wouldn't read it. Just worried about the above stuff. I do find the idea of Stormwatch pre-dating the Justice League awesome, but it's got to piss of some hardcore DC fans.

 

[Jake Martinez]

Just a couple of ocmments -

1) Comics will probably never come back to the grocery store or corner shop. They're just not efficient use of space for volume or purchase. But that's okay, because Bob is right - you should get your weekly/monthly fix via digital and then if you really want a paper copy, buy a trade.

2) After years of living in Australia, hearing an American accent is strange to me. Hearing a Boston accent has now become practically incomprehensible to me. It did my head in.

 

[Stalydan]

Wondered when he was going to start talking about the 52. Good episode.

BTW, for those of you are are interesting in DC comics a bunch of stuff is being release TOMORROW including Batgirl, Animal Man, Swamp Thing, Stormwatch and Grant Morrison's new Golden Age, champion of the oppressed take on Superman in Action Comics (among other things). Justice League came out last week and the best of the new #1s are going to be released over the next 3 weeks. And like said the whole thing is being release digitally, via Comixology.com mainly I think.

Moviebob said people always ask if they want to get into comics where do they start? Well folks, you start NOW!

Will need to read the Batman stuff because it's not "continuity madness" that puts me off but the damn cross-overs with the other comics I have no interest in reading. I dislike about half the Justice League members, never got into Wonder Woman, Green Lantern is just a character that makes me a bit bored from time to time and Superman I can't get into because of Kryptonite overuse :/

NOW THEN. I will be reading the Batman stuff and checking out Young Justice and The Flash. But if I hear good things about the rest of the series, I will have to find them because I really do want to get into it D:

 

[Craazhy]

Bob's brain was apparently raped the previous night by The Fighter, The Departed and the Red Sox's Green Monster mascot.

 

[Something Amyss]

I agree with the whole thing about Reboot problems, but the thing is, you don't need to get into old characters and concepts to bring up continuity.

If you're doing your job right, the reboot will have continuity by itself. And after a couple of years, there comes an entry barrier. As time goes on, you will have a larger and larger entry barrier. This means that the simplicity can only be maintained for a finite period, anyway. So unless you want to do reboots every five years or so, you have problems.

Comics are bound to create continuity unless they're really bad or one-shots. You can't avoid it.

Also, HELL YES to making them more available. There's no comic shop around here anymore, period.

 

[Brandchan]

I wholeheartedly agree with all your points. I read comics in middle/high school then stopped for about 10 years. I got a job at the local comic shop at one point (for my knowledge of manga) and was pretty intimidated by comics at this point. But I was curious enough that I started to pick some stuff up. I started with easy stuff like The Walking Dead and Invincible and moved on to other independent comics. But I was still having a hard time with DC and Marvel there was just so much.

Until on day one of the guys at work talked about this comic coming out soon called Nextwave: Agents of Hate. And I was like OMG, I need to read this, it sounds so cracktastic! So, I did and it was. Then I jumped into some other Marvel titles like the Avengers, and Daredevil. These were actually pretty easy for me to get into because from my teen love of X-men I had read a lot of Marvel.

DC was the tricky one. I had never really read any DC titles, but working at a comic shop I felt I was missing out on what people were talking about. So I just jumped into 52. I guess 30 or so issues of it were out at that point so I just read them all. Just like you said when there was stuff I was interested in (ex: Black Adam) I just went on Wikipedia and looked it up (which got me to read some JSA) and some of the stuff I cared less about (ex: Adam Strange) I just glossed over it. It didn?t make a big difference in my enjoyment of the book.

 

[atomicmrpelly]

Woah, where did the ridiculously thick Boston accent come from? lol

Dr Who sort of does reset the continuity every time he regenerates, everything that happened still happened it just becomes mostly irrelevant. Kinda the same thing.

 

[atomicmrpelly]

Woah, where did the ridiculously thick Boston accent come from? lol

Dr Who sort of does reset the continuity every time he regenerates, everything that happened still happened it just becomes mostly irrelevant. Kinda the same thing.