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At this point, the Marvel universe is a mess for those who don't want to keep up/do a ton of research into it. Furthermore, most of the characters aren't ones you can even connect to...And think of that from the perspective of someone who is just picking up a comic for the first time, or hasn't read since the 90s. They have a familiarity with some aspects of characters through other media, but in other parts they are completely wrong. If it is frustrating enough for consistent readers to drop subscriptions, many new readers will never get into it in the first place. You need to keep barriers for entry low.
Not really. Comics have been going since the 30's and continuity has always been 'loose.'
When I started in the 90's there were a LOT of backissues that I had to track down and lot of connections and cameo's that I never found. I still followed along just fine.
Frnakly, in THIS world... Getting into comics is easier then EVER. Everywhere you look there are TPBs available going all the way back to the original books of the 60's or before. Some of them are on giant DVD collections and you can click through them at your leisure.
If all else fails... Wikipedia!
I was out of X-men for a LONG time before 'all-new x-men' caught my eye... Wikipedia has filled in a LOT of the gaps of what I missed in a solid decade or so.
This... just didn't exist 20 years ago.
The change over to the combined Ultimate universe was inevitable, as the modernized backgrounds and slight (and sometimes changed) alterations on character origins was beginning to become popular and Ultimate books didn't go away like 2099 did.
That was already happening. It started happening around New Avengers when Bendis came over from the Ultimate universe and couldn't keep his universes straight.
Something about Carnage being a vampiric ooze was straight out of Ultimate SPider-man and never had anything to do with his original appearances.
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Here is a thought. Why not let these heroes age?
Spiderman was introduced in 1962... 53 years ago. The amazing spiderman should be in his early 70s. We should be reading about his amazing grand children. This way the stories stay fresh without constantly having to alter the universe.Because writing out popular characters due to old age isn't good business. You wouldn't get really cool new generations of characters, you'd get new universe reboots whenever characters started getting to old to fill their roles.
Well, except for Thor. He'd still be around. :)
But you don't have to write them out... they can just pass the title on to a new generation. Heck you could even have specials where the old timers come out of retirement now and then for some epic event.
Wouldn't work. And really nobody would want that. If people REALLY wanted that, then Nightwing would have outsold Batman. They would not be rebooting Batman in the movies, we would get Joseph-Gordon levitt's version of nightwing or Batman.
Bruce Wayne = Batman. The lonely rich kid who saw his parents murdered and trained himself to be the best in the world using his brains and his tech... Not Bruce Wayne the 3rd who follows his granddaddy's footsteps...
Same with Spider-man and Superman and Captain America... The CORE of the charcters personality is iconic backstory attached to the Secret ID, NOT just the costume. ANYONE can where a Batman costume... but it doesn't mean they are 'Batman'.
Comics have teased this idea a few times over the decades. We get replacements, but they don't last. We get brand new characters that are 'like' spider-man or superman... but they don't sell because they are 'just knock-offs.'
If people were REALLY bored reading the main character, then they would stop buying the book. Which happens sometimes. People really seem bored with Wonder Woman... The book goes away for awhile.
Here's why I consider the idea...
Others above have pointed out cases where it has worked, just as you have point to cases where it doesn't. So it isn't as guaranteed a failure as you want it to be. And in the face of shrinking comic sales I would think it would be worth at least a test run.
have to say Battleworld is collecting a lot of messed up realities in one place.
looking forward to Zombies vs. Robots. Who ever wins, crosses over that wall and goes after everyone else
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I second the notion.
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I say we nuke it from orbit.
would that work on the Planet Hulk section or would that just make the Hordes of Hulks stronger
Here is a thought. Why not let these heroes age?
Spiderman was introduced in 1962... 53 years ago. The amazing spiderman should be in his early 70s. We should be reading about his amazing grand children. This way the stories stay fresh without constantly having to alter the universe.Because writing out popular characters due to old age isn't good business. You wouldn't get really cool new generations of characters, you'd get new universe reboots whenever characters started getting to old to fill their roles.
Well, except for Thor. He'd still be around. :)
But you don't have to write them out... they can just pass the title on to a new generation. Heck you could even have specials where the old timers come out of retirement now and then for some epic event.
Wouldn't work. And really nobody would want that. If people REALLY wanted that, then Nightwing would have outsold Batman. They would not be rebooting Batman in the movies, we would get Joseph-Gordon levitt's version of nightwing or Batman.
Bruce Wayne = Batman. The lonely rich kid who saw his parents murdered and trained himself to be the best in the world using his brains and his tech... Not Bruce Wayne the 3rd who follows his granddaddy's footsteps...
Same with Spider-man and Superman and Captain America... The CORE of the charcters personality is iconic backstory attached to the Secret ID, NOT just the costume. ANYONE can where a Batman costume... but it doesn't mean they are 'Batman'.
Comics have teased this idea a few times over the decades. We get replacements, but they don't last. We get brand new characters that are 'like' spider-man or superman... but they don't sell because they are 'just knock-offs.'
If people were REALLY bored reading the main character, then they would stop buying the book. Which happens sometimes. People really seem bored with Wonder Woman... The book goes away for awhile.
Here's why I consider the idea...
how do you explain spider girl lasting 100+ issues?
how do you explain spider girl lasting 100+ issues?It was a good book.
And it didn't replace Spider-man.
He wasn't Spider Man, though. Not anymore.
It's a tough difficulty that both Marvel and DC are facing. While aging existing characters is risky, they can't just keep rebooting the same hero over and over again either. That strategy worked for a few decades, but it's becoming less and less effective every time they do it, because they can do less and less of a full reboot each time they do it, dampening it's overall value to the new reader. The mixed success of DC's new launch shows that at this point, reboot don't have an inherent advantage over retiring the old characters and trying to establish new ones. Going forward, they are going to have to look at each character and find a mixture of solutions that work for that particular character. Some characters at this point could be aged and replaced with more ease than a reboot, others need to be genuinely rebooted, and taken all the way back to their original roots because they have been retconned so many times they have lost their original pull.
The thing that can be said with absolute certainty is that Marvel's approach and the results will be interesting to see.
Or they could just try telling good stories with the existing characters and adding new ones as they go. Change in emphasis as needed without explicit reboots. Don't try to drive sales with giant cross-over events.
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Maybe I'm looking at this too simply and the real problem is that their most popular characters have become too complicated and need to be gotten rid of or completely redone.
Those are the biggest issues I've seen with a lot of these character, especially the big solo ones like Spiderman, Superman, and Batman. They have already told so many stories from so many angles for over five decades now that coming up with new stories or new angles on old themes while retaining the same core character is getting harder and harder. Marvel actually has less of an issue precisely because it can do the crossovers and get more angles that way, not to mention that many of the heroes are part of groups and thus have far more built in storylines, but it still has the problem of getting overly complicated, as the X-Men lines of comics are showing these days.
Both companies are a point where most of the current top heroes need to either be retired or taken back to their very, very, very first issue ever produced and started over entirely in order for a reboot to really considered a reboot. It's risky either way, but the longer they hold off on doing either, the harder either option becomes. Their only other option is to do things like rewrite Thor as a female to try to respark some interest and hope it holds long enough for the rewrite to stick, which is equally risky. They don't really have a good option right now, so it will be interesting to see what Marvel ends up doing.
But Spiderman, Superman, and Batman are still among the best sellers. They hold down multiple titles each. They're profitable movie franchises. These are the popular heroes that everyone knows and that actually sell comics. Why drastically change them?
You may be bored with them. I may even be bored with them. That doesn't mean they have a problem.
Except that your post includes many things that will become problems sooner rather than later, and have long been problems for most of the rest of the super heroes out there. Multiple titles gets confusing for new readers of the comics, and there are so many versions of each of them most people wouldn't even bother counting them any more. They can get away with repeating the same choices they've made in the past for these few characters for a while still, but that really doesn't help the state of comics overall, and eventually it won't work for these heroes either.
I'm not saying that reboots are automatically a bad choice, but both Marvel and DC have to be willing to explore other options as well where appropriate. Reboots cannot be the only tool they use to keep things fresh if they want to sustain their business; they don't always work and can do a fair bit of harm if done incorrectly. They need to be willing to put some genuinely new characters out there, retire some of the old ones that it makes sense to (and yes, I firmly believe that Peter Parker is one of these; there's only so much of him I can take, and I reached my limit a long time ago; it's not even boredom at this point, it flat out annoyance; his story wears thin quickly), either permanently or by handing off the torch to a new generation, or completely and genuinely reboot most of the remainder. What I don't want to see is another soft reboot that doesn't really change the status quo and fails to create room for genuinely new stories.
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Hmm lots of comments
My two c-bills.
Depends on how it merges. Spiderverse is interesting to me, since it appears they really went all out on all the Spider man realities, from the newspaper comic, to the 60's cartoon, to the current cartoon (and then the cartoon was supposed to have an episode tying in, but I dropped cable, so I don't know.)
What I'd like to see spin out of itr.
a 'core universe' series of books.
An Avengers (With She-Thor, Falcap and Rhodey as the 'big three' Avengers EMH Wasp and Hank)
An X-men
A Spiderman book
A FF book
Wolverines (I like the idea of inverted Sabertooth and Laura getting time in the spotlight)
some solo books. Maybe 10-20 titles over all.
Then a number of alternate books.
Spider Girl (May trying to take care of Benji, age all the classic characters aged up, some of the current 'young crop' of heroes as adults. X-men led by Armor or Ruby Summers, Avengers with Thunderstrike, Silverclaw, Wiccan and Speed, etc.)
Spiderman and wife.
X-men 92
Spider Gwen (would be interesting to see how you could go in a different direction)
2099
X-factor forever (Seriously, if you can find this mini-series, read it.)
etc. Self encapsulated books that could cross over.
But then again, the marvel comics I read are X-factor (sob) and Spiderman 2099.
(Aside, if PAD could handle it, I'd love to see an 'Avengers-Factor' Where he does for C-list Avengers what he's done for c-list mutants.)
Re: DC. Dick becoming Batman was well done, and it was one of the saddest bits of the reboot how they destroyed him. I liked the vibe towards the end that Damian was Dick's Robin, but Tim was Bruce's Robin.
And I loved Steph-Batgirl.
(Aside the second, I'd loved to have seen a book with Steph, Wendy, Rose and other 'children of villians' as an Outsiders kind of team. We could include Conner in that list as well)
I really was exposed to DC through the DCAU, so John is 'my' Green Lantern too. :-)
Hmm lots of comments
My two c-bills.
Depends on how it merges. Spiderverse is interesting to me, since it appears they really went all out on all the Spider man realities, from the newspaper comic, to the 60's cartoon, to the current cartoon (and then the cartoon was supposed to have an episode tying in, but I dropped cable, so I don't know.)
What I'd like to see spin out of itr.
a 'core universe' series of books.An Avengers (With She-Thor, Falcap and Rhodey as the 'big three' Avengers EMH Wasp and Hank)
An X-men
A Spiderman book
A FF book
Wolverines (I like the idea of inverted Sabertooth and Laura getting time in the spotlight)
some solo books. Maybe 10-20 titles over all.Then a number of alternate books.
Spider Girl (May trying to take care of Benji, age all the classic characters aged up, some of the current 'young crop' of heroes as adults. X-men led by Armor or Ruby Summers, Avengers with Thunderstrike, Silverclaw, Wiccan and Speed, etc.)Spiderman and wife.
X-men 92
Spider Gwen (would be interesting to see how you could go in a different direction)
2099
X-factor forever (Seriously, if you can find this mini-series, read it.)
etc. Self encapsulated books that could cross over.
But then again, the marvel comics I read are X-factor (sob) and Spiderman 2099.
(Aside, if PAD could handle it, I'd love to see an 'Avengers-Factor' Where he does for C-list Avengers what he's done for c-list mutants.)
Re: DC. Dick becoming Batman was well done, and it was one of the saddest bits of the reboot how they destroyed him. I liked the vibe towards the end that Damian was Dick's Robin, but Tim was Bruce's Robin.
And I loved Steph-Batgirl.
(Aside the second, I'd loved to have seen a book with Steph, Wendy, Rose and other 'children of villians' as an Outsiders kind of team. We could include Conner in that list as well)
I really was exposed to DC through the DCAU, so John is 'my' Green Lantern too. :-)
hm.
Good stuff.
Retiring the big stars of your franchise because some of your long term readers think they're played out is just a horribly bad business idea.
So is rehashing the same story over and over again. Yes, it will, and does work, for a few heroes, but if that's the only tool they have to keep selling comics, they are going to not sell many other comics aside from the big stars, and that will limit their ability to support the big stars. Again, I don't think that retirement is absolutely necessary in most cases, but advocating for just another reboot is equally problematic for the companies. They need to find something in between, and work their way towards making retirement a more plausible solution the next time they need to refresh the heroes.
If the big stars are selling well and the second string isn't, seems to me the problem is with the other characters. Change them up, not the ones that are selling.
If they aren't willing to make significant changes to the big titles, both companies may as well stop publishing anything not at least second string, since virtually no one will pay attention to them anyway, and accept that the room for growth for the second string characters is going to be limited at best and quite possibly nonexistent. Refusing to risk their big stars is not an option in this market, since not changing them and attempting yet another reboot is just as risky as attempting to retire them or significantly rewrite the character.
I don't understand your argument. Are you saying they need to get rid of their top sellers so that people might pay attention to their other characters?
I'm saying that at this point, all options need to be left on the table, and that includes tampering with or retiring their big heroes if doing so has a reasonable chance of succeeding without being a short term gimmick. Clearly, the changes need to be thought out and executed well, but ideas like maybe Peter Parker doesn't have to be Spiderman all of his life need to be at least considered. If they can find a writer capable of breathing new life into Peter Parker while doing a genuine reboot, great; if they can find a writer that will be able to convince people that someone else can be Spiderman, than let Peter retire, and give the costume to someone else.
Ultimately, its about not just relying what has partially worked before and figuring out a more complete toolset that will allow them to keep characters fresh without having to worry about rebooting them constantly.
thejeff your arguing that they don't get rid of big name heroes... I get that, but if superman is retired and a grown up superboy takes the name and uniform then who would really care? It would still sell under the superman title. Are you really suggesting that the ONLY superman fans will buy is the original Kal-El? And if so then how irritated will those fans be when they reboot him and wipe out every story they ever loved reading in one shot?
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I could be wrong, but I really don't think that's the direction Marvel's going. I think they're planning to merge all the universes, not keep publishing titles in multiple different ones.
It doesn't look like your plan would need a reboot at all or any real in universe justification other than some shuffling of team members and which titles get published.
I doubt they'd go that way either, and it would need some rebooting.
(getting off topic, so I'll spoiler it)
I'd also remove/merge 616 Hank and Jan, and then destory/seal off the EMH universe, so EMH Hank and Jan aren't always trying to 'get home' and 'settle in.' In fact, it could be a story point if EMH Hank and Jan are from 20-30 years ago, they could take the 'man out of time' aspect that Cap always had for storytelling aspects.
Rhodey (and his own book) would be an interesting challenge. I mean he should be able to do basic repairs of his armor, but he's no Tony Stark. He'd have a supporting cast in his own book, I'd not want Tony to be his armorer, rather have a mechanic, and distance himself from Stark Industries (being run by Pepper, who would be a recurring character) for liability reasons. Maybe Parker Industries could tie in? One reason I like Rhodey is that he can't just 'invent a gadget to save the day' He uses his skills as a soldier and a professional and his armor when written correctly.
Hmm, another team book just came to mind.
The Professionals. Pepper Potts, Jen Walters, Dwayne Tayor (Bring him back from the dead) a rebooted Warren Worthington and Peter Parker in a book of corporate espionage and challenges. Essentially rotate through the roster and tell stories of business in the super hero world.
In fact, I'd love to see a 'Spider-men' book, with Married Peter Parker and Parker Industries. Have Peter taking Miles Morales under his wing. It would have the dual hooks of Peter mentoring someone with different powers than himself, and trying to balance his 'great power' as Spider-man, as well as the 'great responsibility' of what Parker Industries can do (and being a family man).
Hmm, if you use the terregen bomb from the current storyline, and have Parker industries make it worse somehow, it means that Hank and Peter can be trying to make a 'cure' for Terragenesis, which would put them in direct conflict with Medusa and Blackbolt.
Medusa: "They're inhumans, it's who they are!"
Hank and Peter: "They didn't ask for these changes, and rather than you lock up the ones that are evil, we just depower them and they can go back to their lives."
Retiring the big stars of your franchise because some of your long term readers think they're played out is just a horribly bad business idea.So is rehashing the same story over and over again. Yes, it will, and does work, for a few heroes, but if that's the only tool they have to keep selling comics, they are going to not sell many other comics aside from the big stars, and that will limit their ability to support the big stars. Again, I don't think that retirement is absolutely necessary in most cases, but advocating for just another reboot is equally problematic for the companies. They need to find something in between, and work their way towards making retirement a more plausible solution the next time they need to refresh the heroes.
Comic readership may be down in current years... but we are talking about 80 years of success. This idea of people will get bored with the main characters really has no basis. Because we've already been SEEING the same stories over and over again... and they're still going strong.
Honestly, I REALLY enjoyed the Superior Spider-man, where Doc Ock took over parker's body. It was fun and interesting. I would not have wanted or expected it to be permanent... it was just a story arc. But the amount of nerdrage and people dropping the books and swearing off Marvel for what was obviously a temporary stunt was astounding.
THAT was a chance to get 'an all-new spider-man' and it did not go over well with fans.
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Why do we need to change old characters? If the new generation brings completely different characters, they are no longer the characters I love. If they have the same personality of their predecessors, what's the point of having a new generation?
It's not just a rehash of old stories. Every now and then we get truly great re-imaginings of the character and truly creative stories.
Besides, it's not a rehash if you're seeing/writing it for the first time, and not every reader/writer has been around since the golden age of comics.
I grew up loving the stories that star Peter Parker, Bruce Wayne and Kal-el (all of which I'd have never known if comics progressed in real time). If I stopped reading comics for a while and came back to find out all my favorite are dead/retired, I'd probably not even bother returning to comics.
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I think part of the problem with the 'big' characters is that, for better or worse, the companies are reluctant to disturb the status quo for long periods of time.
Most of the "Cap isn't Steve Rogers" storylines I've read for example, highlight that Steve Rogers is Cap. Bucky-cap is different than Steve, but the Man without the country storyline years ago showed that Steve is still Cap, even without the logo. The ideals that he represents don't go away if he's not in the red white and blue.
Likewise, John Walker's stint in the uniform in the 80s was showing that the uniform doesn't make the man.
Bruce is still Batman, even if you take his resources away. Dickbats, like BuckyCap, is different. If you had Buckycap, or Dickbats or SamCap for that matter, as Cap for ten or 15 years, you might find that they come into their own. (I think both Steve and BuckyCap could hold their own stories, as could Bruce and Dickbats, but I'm not in the industry.)
(Dick Grayson is the exception it seems, as he had a long and successful career and book as Nightwing, where Sam, Rhodey, John Henry, etc, never really got out from their 'sidekick' status. Which is a shame as I like Falcon, War Machine and Steel)
X-Factor's success, and niche, in the past has been that PAD could run with the characters no one wanted, and make them into characters people want. PAD redefined Quicksilver in one page with his PMS (Pietro Maximoff Syndrome) in X-factor, and he took Multiple Man, Rictor and Shatterstar and made them unique and interesting. (Shatterstar for frak's sake!) Likewise, when the previous incarnation of X-Factor ended, other writers actually fought over Monet. You'd never see the Powers that Be risk their 'a-list' characters under such revision. Even when it works (Another example would be PADs run on the Hulk, radically redefining the character) eventually status quo seems to rear its ugly head.
(Aside, I'm hoping Marvel keeps Wolverine dead for at least 10 years. Laura coming into her own, and Inverted Sabertooth dealing with his past have much more interesting stories to tell. I wish they'd kept Colossus and Medusa inverted, as well as Mystique.)
You're still assuming that Peter Parker needs new life breathed into him. Peter's doing just fine. You might not like him, but he's quite popular. Why are you so insistent that any fix to sales problems with other characters involve major changes to Peter Parker?
Peter gets rebooted / refreshed / resurrected constantly. Let's see - in recent times he's had his mind erased completely and overwritten by Dr Octopus. Before that, he had his past rewritten and his marriage erased by making a deal with a demon. Before that, he revealed his secret identity to the world and was given a new high-tech spider suit by Iron Man. Before that, I seem to remember something about him turning into a spider-monster and dying and being reborn? And before that he was a clone of himself. And before that he was attached to the Venom symbiote.
That's how comics stop characters going stale. Yes, some of the character events are pretty silly, but it means when they return to a the status quo (usually with a new variation, such as him having a job as a scientist instead of a photographer, getting a new girlfriend, or whatever) and enough time has passed that it seems interesting to have him fighting regular super-villains again.
You're still assuming that Peter Parker needs new life breathed into him. Peter's doing just fine. You might not like him, but he's quite popular. Why are you so insistent that any fix to sales problems with other characters involve major changes to Peter Parker?
Because Peter Parker is not doing all that well overall, nor is Bruce Wayne, or Clark Kent. They are doing well compared to other characters, but that doesn't take much, and they have long since plateaued. Their movies, while still blockbusters, are very up and down, with some of them doing really well, and some of them being really bad. It's also notable that it was Iron Man and Guardians of the Galaxy that really got people outside the existing fanbase talking, not Spiderman or Batman. The fact that they have variant comic lines that are talked about just as much or more than the main comic (I've seen as many or more references to the alternate Spidermans in this thread than I have to the officially canon Spiderman), and, with DC at least, frequently push the original character off to the side/replace the original character in even the main line hurts your argument, rather than helping it. It shows that the base concept is still interesting, but that a lot of people are getting tired of the original characters and stories that have comparatively little to offer in terms of insights on the base concept.
The underlying problem both Marvel and DC have is that neither company has really produced a new major super hero in last two decades; the few random accidental ones, like Wolverine, are the exception rather than the rule, and even those have mostly been was putting out the right story at the right time to elevate existing heroes. They have the same problem that D&D novels have; the brightness of the bigger stars hides the fact that they really don't have much beyond the stars. Marvel actually has a chance to break this if the next string of movies succeeds (I suppose DC technically does too, but they are a bigger long shot), but even than, it's still relying on characters, villains, and plots that were developed a generation of writers ago. Unless they start cultivating writers that are capable of writing completely new material that people want to read, they are going to continue to have the same problem they do now, and eventually, it will catch up to them.
I don't think they need to change the big names immediately or without a good story to back it up, but both companies do need to be aware that the time is coming where they might need to make significant changes to their leading lineup and need to start planning accordingly. The big stars are starting to show their age, and will need to either be revamped (not just rebooted again), retired, or replaced sooner rather than later.
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They might come into their own, but I'd rather they did it as Dick did - in their own right, rather than in someone else's costume. I'd rather see Nightwing than Dickbats, other than in fairly short runs to show how he handles it and contrast with Bruce.
Oh I firmly agree. Dick was successful as Nightwing, and he could be Batman, but he was successful as Nightwing. I want Sam-as-Falcon to be as successful, Rhodey-as-War Machine, John-as-Steel etc. Sam-as-Cap may be successful, but it feels like he's still in Steve's shadow.
(I've said in the past that Steel should be DC's Iron Man, successful businessman and power armor user. Superman can be his inspiration, like how people are inspired irl by the comics as kids, or many scientists cite Star Trek as what 'got them into' science. But a John Henry enterprises that builds robotics and light exoskeletions to help people, and he builds the Steel armor to be a hero would rock.)
Of course, with Secret Wars, we might have a universe where Tony, Thor, and Steve are out of the picture, and a new Iron Man, Thora, and Falcap are the 'default'.
Peter gets rebooted / refreshed / resurrected constantly. Let's see - in recent times he's had his mind erased completely and overwritten by Dr Octopus. Before that, he had his past rewritten and his marriage erased by making a deal with a demon. Before that, he revealed his secret identity to the world and was given a new high-tech spider suit by Iron Man. Before that, I seem to remember something about him turning into a spider-monster and dying and being reborn? And before that he was a clone of himself. And before that he was attached to the Venom symbiote.That's how comics stop characters going stale. Yes, some of the character events are pretty silly, but it means when they return to a the status quo (usually with a new variation, such as him having a job as a scientist instead of a photographer, getting a new girlfriend, or whatever) and enough time has passed that it seems interesting to have him fighting regular super-villains again.
The problem is that you can't rely on short term gimmicks forever. They stop the bleeding caused by boredom, but they don't really do much to help with growth because the loss of continuity drives just as many people away. And that is my biggest difficulty with how Marvel and DC have been approaching the problem; they either have to say to heck with continuity or hope enough time has passed since the last time they pulled out a particular villain that enough people have forgotten enough about that particular plot for it to be interesting again. They have largely forgotten how to create interesting new content that doesn't completely change or ignore the existing material and heroes. If they could show a capability to do that, I would be less worried about their use of silly side arcs, but when that kind of side arc becomes the norm, they stop trying to genuinely evolve and develop the character in ways that allow for changes to the character that don't seem entirely out of place.
I stopped trying to follow superhero continuity a while back. I think it was around the time Professor X died in the Avengers versus X-Men event, and I thought, "Wait, didn't he die in the Messiah Complex event? When did he come back to life?"
And DC rebooted their entire universe, which made me lose interest there.
There's a limit to how long any one person can stay invested in something that tries to produce a thousand pages of drama events every month. It doesn't mean they've got worse overall - just that eventually any one reader starts to notice the patterns and gets bored.
They're still plenty profitable - Marvel's cinematic universe, DC's TV superhero universe - both of which mostly use source material that would be familiar to readers from thirty years ago or more.
Sure, it would be great if they could reliably turn out new characters that hit those heights, but they can't. And there's no reason to think that getting rid of the mainstays would change that.
Simply continuing to rely on the existing characters isn't going to help them any though, as the mainstays aren't all they used to be. This thread alone has talked about 2 different Batmans, 3 different Robins, 2 different Spidermans (+ a fair number of variants on Peter Parker's base story), 2 or 3 Green Lanterns, 2 Captain Americas, 2 Thors, and there was recently an entire multipage thread on the different X-Men over the years. All of that is before you get into the movie versions of all of these and other comic book characters. Trying to talk about any of these as if there is a consistent core character and story anymore for any of them is already extremely difficult. And it's just going to keep getting hard to justify the claim as time goes on. There is already less demand that Batman has to be Bruce Wayne or that Spiderman has to be Peter Parker. Done right, retiring Peter Parker or Bruce Wayne permanently is entirely plausible in that environment, especially if they couple it with the reprinting of the classic stories that feature the retired character that allow current readers to experience both stories without having to worry about continuity questions.
Short of a radical and complete reboot for everyone and literally starting over from scratch, I just don't see them doing much with the existing characters other than continuing the slow slide into a smaller and smaller niche. The older characters won't simply disappear over night, but they can and will continue to lose relevance across the general population, especially given the shifts in ages and cultures our country is facing. Let's face it; while Steve Rogers and Clark Kent made a very good Captain America and Superman for their time, everything about them is based on a time and an ethos that simply does not exist anymore. And stories like Spiderman and Batman have the difficulty that never ending stories without any meaningful resolution tend to lose meaning over time. They may still be interesting on a purely entertainment level, but given how much competition these stories have today in the realm of being purely entertainment, that doesn't mean as much as it used to.
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Let's face it; while Steve Rogers and Clark Kent made a very good Captain America and Superman for their time, everything about them is based on a time and an ethos that simply does not exist anymore....
which time was 'their' time? The 30's? 50's? 80's? 2000's?
Frankly that is one of the things that I find so depressing. That having a decent, morally upright champion of 'good' isnt' relevant anymore.
It pretends that the past was some rosy wonderland where 'good guys' could flourish... but lets be honest. WWII, Depressions, Civil Rights, Watergate, etc. etc, weren't 'good' times. Characters like these should inspire... and in THIS day and age, I argue they are more needed then ever.
Let's face it; while Steve Rogers and Clark Kent made a very good Captain America and Superman for their time, everything about them is based on a time and an ethos that simply does not exist anymore....which time was 'their' time? The 30's? 50's? 80's? 2000's?
Frankly that is one of the things that I find so depressing. That having a decent, morally upright champion of 'good' isnt' relevant anymore.
It pretends that the past was some rosy wonderland where 'good guys' could flourish... but lets be honest. WWII, Depressions, Civil Rights, Watergate, etc. etc, weren't 'good' times. Characters like these should inspire... and in THIS day and age, I argue they are more needed then ever.
Whether they are needed and whether they are likely to be embraced are two different conversations. The first one is usually pretty straight forward, but but the second is much harder to get consensus on in this country right now. Everyone wants that champion, but no one can agree on what who that champion should be and what precisely he should stand for. Trying to establish a universal champion and inspiring people in a way that both Captain America and Superman did just brings out all the special interest groups that are upset that the champion doesn't specifically champion their major concern, and so therefore, he cannot legitimately considered a champion of anything good.
I think the competition from other forms of entertainment is what's hurting comic sales. I don't think ditching their still top characters is going to fix that.
If Superman and Captain America aren't relevant anymore, why have they just had blockbuster movies? Why are they still top selling comics?
Exactly. It's not that people are tired of Peter Parker or Bruce Wayne, it's just that current format of comics is becoming obsolete and that they have a lot of competition nowadays. For better of for worse, digital distribution is the future, and in the 60s they didn't have to compete with games, cartoons, movies and TV series... At least not to the extent that they do today.
I still buy print comics, but it's a dying format...
I think the competition from other forms of entertainment is what's hurting comic sales. I don't think ditching their still top characters is going to fix that.
If Superman and Captain America aren't relevant anymore, why have they just had blockbuster movies? Why are they still top selling comics?
There's a difference between relevant and entertaining when it comes to comic book characters and that difference is a big reason why no new major heroes have really developed for a long time.
Entertainment has always been an important aspect of these characters, and continues to be, but they haven't always been pure entertainment. There was a pretty strict code of what was and was not acceptable to include in the comics because these characters were expected to exemplify what we could be and should aim to become, both as individuals and as a greater society. And, like it or hate it, it worked. Even into the late 60's, people bought into that whole idea and made some of the characters, like Captain America and Superman, almost national icons for a time.
By the 80's, though, that had pretty much ended; the code was gone, any sense of a unified message was gone, and comics were almost purely entertainment. While not entirely bad, the shift basically removed any need for the very few attempts at continuity that had been attempted in the past, making meaning that it was more practical to do what you do, which is to stick with a particular writer, not the characters directly. Comics still did reasonably well for a while because they did not yet have any major competition.
That has dramatically changed. Yes, the movies still do well, but most of the general public sees them as just another action flick, and not much more. Even among the comics, you see the splintering effect of alternate universes, alternate timelines, etc. to the point where the original core story is often all but lost as the focus became all about staying interesting and entertaining, which many of the side arcs that we still see today are, over telling an overarching story that really draws people in for the long haul.
For some people this is really great, but it's impact on overall relevance is not positive. They are now just another story that a few people will really, really like and everyone else pretty much reads or watches once and forgets it. There is virtually no long term draw or appeal to the character itself. You could replace the reel of any of the recent comic hero movies with any other decently written action or comic book movie, and most of the audience wouldn't have cared. There are a few that you couldn't only because of the quality of movie overall, the interaction between the individual actors, and other technical aspects of the movie, but rarely are the characters themselves the major draw for these movies. People didn't flock to Iron Man or Avengers because of Tony Stark; they did it because of Robert Downey, Jr.
New characters wouldn't be a silver bullet that automatically fixes these problems, nor would handing off the mask to someone else, but just sticking with the same old characters doesn't even attempt to fix the problem, so I fail to see why it is bad to even think about retiring them. It's not always going to be the best response upon further examination, but neither is refusing to even think about it.