You own Marvel comics (RAR!)

[The Romulan Republic]

Well, I've posted on more than one occasion (at least in passing) about the sprawling, chaotic mess of retcons, shock-value deaths and resurrections, and often sexist tripe that forms much of comics continuity. In particularly, I've stated my preference for films over comics because, the reason being that by having a smaller and more constrained continuity, they tend to be less of a mess and less impenetrable to someone who isn't a lifelong fan.

So, that brings me to the topic of this thread:

Suppose that tomorrow, by some fluke, you were handed complete ownership of Marvel comics and all its related properties, adaptations, etc., including X-Men, Fantastic Four, and any other film rights currently owned by other studios.

What would you do?

Honestly, I'd probably earn the eternal hatred of a lot of fans by hard-rebooting the entire comics continuity, try to streamline the comics-verse and start with a blank slate. Fewer titles, with a focus on quality over quantity. Maybe try to reach a larger audience by appealing to broader demographics and maybe having issues released as web comics as well as in print.

I'd wrap up the planned films in the MCU before trying to reboot the film-verse though.

More details to come, but I'm going to let others weigh in first.

[Crazedwraith]

Yes, you would be hated and rightly so.

On a creative level, the most appalling thing people do in comics is try and reset things to how they were when they were young or when they read and liked a character. Understandable, but pisses off the current fans and ignores the growth and changes that actually happen in a long on-going comic book, albeit slowly and not always consistently.

From a business sense cancelling all your comics that are selling and replace them with new versions that might not is also risky.

--

If I was in charge of Marvel, I would be very hands off because I am in no way a business man. I would suggest we do a review of which books are selling and which are not and try to cut the wheat from the chaff there. I would cut down on event comics (unless they really are the ones selling masses, unfortunately but there you are)

From a creative point of view, I would also try and discourage the writer's from doing hero vs hero storys. Civil War. X-Men Vs Avengers. X-Men Vs Inhumans, it all sounds like shite to me. Concentrate on heroes and villians. And stop shitting over the X-Men. They're popular, they sell, do good stuff and good comics with them, build the brand and use that to negotiate with Fox for rights, cross overs with the MCU.

The MCU gets left in the capable hands of the people running it already.

[The Romulan Republic]

Yes, you would be hated and rightly so.

On a creative level, the most appalling thing people do in comics is try and reset things to how they were when they were young or when they read and liked a character.

Well, my intent would be less about restoring it to a particular point that I view through rose-tinted glasses, than about starting over with a more or less blank slate, so we can ditch the baggage of previous shitty decisions and take things in a new direction. Moving forward, not moving back.

Marvel's not the only franchise I'd apply this to. I'm of the view that long-running franchises tend to benefit from a hard reboot every five or ten years or so. People can still enjoy the old stuff, but it lets new writers take the basic concepts in new directions, without being held down by old baggage.

Of course, then you get writers just sliding quickly back to the old status quo, as has happened to some extent with the Disney reboot of the Star Wars EU.

Understandable, but pisses off the current fans and ignores the growth and changes that actually happen in a long on-going comic book, albeit slowly and not always consistently.

From a business sense cancelling all your comics that are selling and replace them with new versions that might not is also risky.

--

Eh, I don't have the numbers, but I suspect that its the films, not the comics, that are the real money-maker for Marvel these days.

And you weigh the risk of losing the old audience against the chance to gain a wider audience.

If I was in charge of Marvel, I would be very hands off because I am in no way a business man.

Fair enough. Neither am I, and I'd probably defer to others a lot on business decisions.

I'm coming at this from a writing/editorial perspective, since creative writing is territory in which I have at least some knowledge and experience.

I would suggest we do a review of which books are selling and which are not and try to cut the wheat from the chaff there. I would cut down on event comics (unless they really are the ones selling masses, unfortunately but there you are)

Both sound ideas, I think.

From a creative point of view, I would also try and discourage the writer's from doing hero vs hero storys. Civil War. X-Men Vs Avengers. X-Men Vs Inhumans, it all sounds like shite to me.

It can be good, and you can tell a compelling story about heroes with legitimate conflicts of interest being pitted against one another, but I think that you're probably fighting an uphill battle, most of the time, in finding a compelling and sympathetic motivation for both sides to fight that is in character, and doesn't end up ruining characters.

And that, to some extent, such stories are just written as dick-measuring contests between peoples' favourite characters.

Concentrate on heroes and villians. And stop shitting over the X-Men. They're popular, they sell, do good stuff and good comics with them, build the brand and use that to negotiate with Fox for rights, cross overs with the MCU.

Well, for my OP, I posited that you already have the rights to X-Men back, but otherwise, I agree.

The MCU gets left in the capable hands of the people running it already.

See, my point is that, on the comics side at least, I don't think they are terribly capable. Though you are free to disagree, of course.

The film-verse... has its flaws, certainly, but its certainly a financial success, and creatively I give them credit for trying interconnected storytelling on a scale that I don't think has any precedent in film history, and largely pulling it off.

[Crazedwraith]

Well, my intent would be less about restoring it to a particular point that I view through rose-tinted glasses, than about starting over with a more or less blank slate, so we can ditch the baggage of previous shitty decisions and take things in a new direction. Moving forward, not moving back.

Marvel's not the only franchise I'd apply this to. I'm of the view that long-running franchises tend to benefit from a hard reboot every five or ten years or so. People can still enjoy the old stuff, but it lets new writers take the basic concepts in new directions, without being held down by old baggage.

Of course, then you get writers just sliding quickly back to the old status quo, as has happened to some extent with the Disney reboot of the Star Wars EU.

The problem I see with that is you get stuck doing the same 'origin story, new hero learning the ropes' type stories over and over and over again. It's boring for those that have stuck with you for that time. There's only so many times you can do 'great power/great responsibillity' before people are 'yawn, seen it'. Amazing Spider-Man didn't do as well as Spider-Man for this reason, even though it was imho better than Spider-Man. (but then it built on the previous spidey films) You see films like Homecoming and BvS praised merely for summarising or omitting the origin.

Now this or may or may not be massive flaw in a business sense because the idea is readers only stay with a comicbook for five years until they grow out of it anyway. So each new generation of fans get a new version of the story. And they may well be the majority

To me the flaw of 'omg too much continuity' is overstated and a sign of bad writing not an inherent badness of ongoing continuity. Think a big franchise like Star Trek. You didn't need to have seen every last episode of TOS to understand TNG, all of TNG to understand DS9 or VGR or of course ENT. You might get more out of certain episodes but you wouldn't have been lost watching them either.

The same for comics books, you can write a good spider-man story that comes on top of however many decades of continuity without requiring you to have read it.

Eh, I don't have the numbers, but I suspect that its the films, not the comics, that are the real money-maker for Marvel these days.

And you weigh the risk of losing the old audience against the chance to gain a wider audience.

That's very true but unless it's making a loss (and it actually might) Disney/Marvel still want to keep the comics wing healthy. If I remember SFDebris' videos correctly they actually have to keep the characters in print to keep the film/merchandising rights that are the real big money spinners.

And yes that is the trade off and I think it's much riskier than you are imagining.

See, my point is that, on the comics side at least, I don't think they are terribly capable. Though you are free to disagree, of course.

The film-verse... has its flaws, certainly, but its certainly a financial success, and creatively I give them credit for trying interconnected storytelling on a scale that I don't think has any precedent in film history, and largely pulling it off.

I know there are aspects to the films we don't agree on. cough*CivilWar*cough. And that's fine you're entitled to think what you like about the films. But I'm not sure how you can call them incapable when they've created something that's lasted nearly a decade of multiple films a year and all of them to some degree successful, financially, critically and viewer opinionally .


If I was starting the MCU afresh there's a certainly things I'd do differently. I think the MCU is first about making the individual films good and less about the overall arc. There are some character arcs I'd like planned out better among the films, some story lines that could have blended together better. (The leap to AoU to CW is especially jarring to me) and much more trivially, I'd have gone the DCAU route and planned out characters leitmotifs from the start using them consistently across solo and team films. (bonus points if team themes can meld individual themes)

But as you say they get point for being the first and most successful players in the shared movie universe game.

[Vendetta]

Well, my intent would be less about restoring it to a particular point that I view through rose-tinted glasses, than about starting over with a more or less blank slate, so we can ditch the baggage of previous shitty decisions and take things in a new direction. Moving forward, not moving back.

That's not actually as relevant as you think.

People think comics have continuity, but they actually don't. They have eternal sameness, all these things that seem to change the status quo only do so for a while, and either gradually or suddenly it wanders back to the eternal sameness.

Marvel used to have continuity, back in the very old days things changed and by and large stayed changed, characters grew, had children, their children grew. It started out in real time, then time started to stretch, then it snapped completely and eternal sameness began. Characters reverted to archetypes and never really permanently changed from them, nothing could grow, nobody could move on. The appearance of continuity exists, but continuity does not. Only sameness.


So a "clean slate" reboot doesn't do anything that isn't happening anyway, things that don't get dramatically reverted to archetype quietly wander back to it as writers change.



So, given all power at Marvel, I'd let writers play with the existing archetypes to service the copyrights to make real money out of films on, whilst starting up a new stable of content much more along the Japanese model. Anthology books with a dozen or more stories on cheap stock from a dozen or more writers that can be sold everywhere, then republish the ones that turn out popular in higher quality TPBs that will look good in bookstores.

[The Romulan Republic]

To elaborate on my reboot argument, I have three main gripes with the story-telling in Marvel (and DC) comics.

1. Some highly questionable specific story decisions, which I suspect were either agenda-driven or done for cheap exploitation/shock value in a lot of cases. Or a bit of both. Spiderman's "One More Day" is, I believe, a particularly notorious example.

2. One aspect of the above is constant character death/resurrection, with the result that "comic book death" has basically become a running gag. Ditto with the constant retcons, which means that even if you retcon a questionable decision, no one has any reason to believe that the retcon will stick either. And since nothing has any real consistency or lasting import, why should the readership take it seriously?

3. The continuity is simply so vast, sprawling, and convoluted, with so many heavily-interconnected titles, that it is nearly impenetrable for someone who isn't a life-long, die-hard fan. Or at least that's my perceptions.

I love super heroes, am a big fan of various film and television adaptations, have read a number of Marvel and DC comics stories, and frequently read reviews and commentary on Marvel and DC comics, yet I find getting into the larger comics-verse rather daunting.

Imagine how most people must find it.

I see hard-rebooting as arguably the only way to plausibly fix this.

Oh, another point:

Hire more female artists. Seriously.

While I've delt primarily with story issues thus far in this thread, I also have some major gripes with a lot of comic book art. Mainly, the near-universal tendency to draw all female characters as extremely sexualized and in highly-sexualize poses in every possible circumstance, no matter how inappropriate it is.

Now, I like sexy women as much as the next heterosexual man, but I don't need or want to see all the female characters drawn in porn poses in every scene (okay, that's a slight exaggeration, but only slight for some books). On top of the obvious ethical/sexism issues, its just fucking distracting from the story, and potentially even cuts into suspension of disbelief.

I expect that this is largely a consequence of male artists objectifying the characters that they draw, and I suspect that a higher percentage of female artists might cut back on this tendency. I recall one specific series I read where this problem noticeably increased when they shifted from a female to male artist, and I wouldn't be surprised if its a pattern.

Well, my intent would be less about restoring it to a particular point that I view through rose-tinted glasses, than about starting over with a more or less blank slate, so we can ditch the baggage of previous shitty decisions and take things in a new direction. Moving forward, not moving back.

That's not actually as relevant as you think.

People think comics have continuity, but they actually don't. They have eternal sameness, all these things that seem to change the status quo only do so for a while, and either gradually or suddenly it wanders back to the eternal sameness.

Marvel used to have continuity, back in the very old days things changed and by and large stayed changed, characters grew, had children, their children grew. It started out in real time, then time started to stretch, then it snapped completely and eternal sameness began. Characters reverted to archetypes and never really permanently changed from them, nothing could grow, nobody could move on. The appearance of continuity exists, but continuity does not. Only sameness.


So a "clean slate" reboot doesn't do anything that isn't happening anyway, things that don't get dramatically reverted to archetype quietly wander back to it as writers change.



So, given all power at Marvel, I'd let writers play with the existing archetypes to service the copyrights to make real money out of films on, whilst starting up a new stable of content much more along the Japanese model. Anthology books with a dozen or more stories on cheap stock from a dozen or more writers that can be sold everywhere, then republish the ones that turn out popular in higher quality TPBs that will look good in bookstores.

Yeah, that "eternal sameness" is a product of the need to keep reusing the same characters and ideas that sell, which means no story can ever have a definitive conclusion or direction.

I don't really see a way around that, but periodic reboots would allow each separate continuity to have a definitive story (like how Nolan's Batman could actually retire at the end), while still allowing the characters to be reused.

Well, my intent would be less about restoring it to a particular point that I view through rose-tinted glasses, than about starting over with a more or less blank slate, so we can ditch the baggage of previous shitty decisions and take things in a new direction. Moving forward, not moving back.

Marvel's not the only franchise I'd apply this to. I'm of the view that long-running franchises tend to benefit from a hard reboot every five or ten years or so. People can still enjoy the old stuff, but it lets new writers take the basic concepts in new directions, without being held down by old baggage.

Of course, then you get writers just sliding quickly back to the old status quo, as has happened to some extent with the Disney reboot of the Star Wars EU.

The problem I see with that is you get stuck doing the same 'origin story, new hero learning the ropes' type stories over and over and over again. It's boring for those that have stuck with you for that time. There's only so many times you can do 'great power/great responsibillity' before people are 'yawn, seen it'. Amazing Spider-Man didn't do as well as Spider-Man for this reason, even though it was imho better than Spider-Man. (but then it built on the previous spidey films) You see films like Homecoming and BvS praised merely for summarising or omitting the origin.

Now this or may or may not be massive flaw in a business sense because the idea is readers only stay with a comicbook for five years until they grow out of it anyway. So each new generation of fans get a new version of the story. And they may well be the majority

Well, yeah, if you're only marketing to a single age-group.

And yeah, its hard to do a good, or fresh, origin story. Not impossible, but difficult, especially if you insist on rehashing the same points each time.

To me the flaw of 'omg too much continuity' is overstated and a sign of bad writing not an inherent badness of ongoing continuity. Think a big franchise like Star Trek. You didn't need to have seen every last episode of TOS to understand TNG, all of TNG to understand DS9 or VGR or of course ENT. You might get more out of certain episodes but you wouldn't have been lost watching them either.

The same for comics books, you can write a good spider-man story that comes on top of however many decades of continuity without requiring you to have read it.

Perhaps, but my point is that the bad writing has become so entrenched that it inclines me towards thinking that the only solution is a slash and burn approach.

That's very true but unless it's making a loss (and it actually might) Disney/Marvel still want to keep the comics wing healthy. If I remember SFDebris' videos correctly they actually have to keep the characters in print to keep the film/merchandising rights that are the real big money spinners.

And yes that is the trade off and I think it's much riskier than you are imagining.

Hmm, you may be right. I admitted up-front that I'm coming at this more from a story-telling perspective than a business perspective.

At the same time, I think the business side might be better served by trying to draw in a wider audience.

I know there are aspects to the films we don't agree on. cough*CivilWar*cough. And that's fine you're entitled to think what you like about the films. But I'm not sure how you can call them incapable when they've created something that's lasted nearly a decade of multiple films a year and all of them to some degree successful, financially, critically and viewer opinionally .[/quote

I explicitly said that I considered the film side of things better-run than the comics.

If I was starting the MCU afresh there's a certainly things I'd do differently. I think the MCU is first about making the individual films good and less about the overall arc. There are some character arcs I'd like planned out better among the films, some story lines that could have blended together better. (The leap to AoU to CW is especially jarring to me) and much more trivially, I'd have gone the DCAU route and planned out characters leitmotifs from the start using them consistently across solo and team films. (bonus points if team themes can meld individual themes)

But as you say they get point for being the first and most successful players in the shared movie universe game.

Interesting.

[Solauren]

Sell it all back to Disney and retire to my own island.....

[The Romulan Republic]

Sell it all back to Disney and retire to my own island.....

Well, that works, though the intent was more "What sort of changes to Marvel continuity/writing/editorial direction/etc. would you like to see."

But you certainly have a practical mind.

[LadyTevar]

Spider-Gwen, Ms. Marvel (young Muslim), and Jane-Thor all show that Female Heroes Sell Books.
Now, I'm not talking going overboard on that theme, but there are many female heroes in Marvel who could be brought into the limelight, with a good enough writer. Doesn't have to be a female writer, but does need to be someone who will treat these ladies like the heroes they are, and give them interesting stories to follow. Because comics are all about the STORY.

So, try to move Marvel to focus more on the ladies. Don't touch the main comics that are selling well now. Warn them there will be no more "Hail Hydra Cap", or any other 'SURPRISE HE"S A VILLAIN ALL ALONG" storylines, as that just pisses people off. Controversy might sell a comic for a month or two, but it loses more fans that way.

Hire more Female Writers. Hire young artistic talent.

Start headhunting young artists with webcomics, see if they wanna go print with the BigDawg, instead of self-publishing deadtree anthologies. Marvel picked up Wendy Pini's Elfquest saga in the 1980s, and it introduced a wider audience to her self-published work. They parted ways after that chapter of the saga ended, but it gave the Pinis' a great lesson in making their own small comic firm. Being able to recreate that with another self-publishing artist would be the goal.

[The Romulan Republic]

All of that sounds pretty good, though I would add creating more original female and minority characters, in addition to making better use of the existing ones.

[Crazedwraith]

Perhaps, but my point is that the bad writing has become so entrenched that it inclines me towards thinking that the only solution is a slash and burn approach.

And interesting metaphor since that's a massively wasteful form of agriculture. And writing.

You want to solve bad writing. Hire better writers. That's it. That's all that's needed. Create a better product from where you are.

Take Star Trek, which would you rather have, given equal production values and writing a quality. A reboot series? or a post-TNG adaption of STO?

At the same time, I think the business side might be better served by trying to draw in a wider audience.

It's not an either or situation. Bringing in a wider audience is not contingent on a reboot. It's contingent on writing stuff a wider audience wants to see. Continuity is actually a bonus here. You can spin people off popular comics. Introduce them in team books, before spinning them off. Attract audiences to new books. (aka Wolverine publicity, just don't over do it.)

I feel like you're taking reboot=better as axiomatic truth. Apparently in a knee-jerk rejection of the popular opinion that it's not.

I explicitly said that I considered the film side of things better-run than the comics.

Whoops, sorry I missed that. Perhaps because you said it in regards to something where I was explicitly talking about the MCU only.

[Crazedwraith]

Ironically Marvel comics has done their big event Reboot recently, from what I read "Secret Wars" was in the vein of DC' Crisses/Zero Hours events that changed the comic history.

They've also started pushing female/minority heroes more. If they're not doing so well or as seen as competent any more it's because they're doing exactly what TRR wants.

[Solauren]

Sell it all back to Disney and retire to my own island.....

Well, that works, though the intent was more "What sort of changes to Marvel continuity/writing/editorial direction/etc. would you like to see."

But you certainly have a practical mind.

I lack the interest, emotional investment, or business experience to run something like Marvel comics.

That, and any change I make will piss of at least some fans, so screw that, I'm buying myself an Island.

I'll just name it Genosha, and make sure the Marvel studios contracts include actresses spending time on the island with me

[FaxModem1]

Run a limited series on the X-men and mutant sub-culture and how they like to force through peer pressure for their female members to wear revealing clothing, as shown here. For context, these are mutants who are living with the X-men, looking for a home. Either all women who have the mutant gene like to wear revealing clothing, or Scott and Logan don't give them real clothing compared to their male runaways who join up.

Have it star an existing character like Dust, or an original character, who wants to leave the mainstream mutant culture over how overly sexist it is and that the only way to be embraced by the X-men and mutants in general is conforming to their culture. IE, an allegory about fitting into a minority subculture's standards, when you don't fit the mold about being a standard member of that subculture, while also dealing with the very real problem of Marvel's double standard on women.

[Crazedwraith]

Run a limited series on the X-men and mutant sub-culture and how they like to force through peer pressure for their female members to wear revealing clothing, as shown here. For context, these are mutants who are living with the X-men, looking for a home. Either all women who have the mutant gene like to wear revealing clothing, or Scott and Logan don't give them real clothing compared to their male runaways who join up.

Have it star an existing character like Dust, or an original character, who wants to leave the mainstream mutant culture over how overly sexist it is and that the only way to be embraced by the X-men and mutants in general is conforming to their culture. IE, an allegory about fitting into a minority subculture's standards, when you don't fit the mold about being a standard member of that subculture, while also dealing with the very real problem of Marvel's double standard on women.

That seems a really mean spirited way to go about the issue 'women wear too skimpy outfits comics'. I mean I guess props for doing a story on it rather than just saying 'don't do it anymore'. But a story that says 'your heroes were really were pervy misogynists abusing their authority all along' is really kind of a shit move. These guys are supposed to be good guys in-universe after all.

And it's not like the X-Men are the only heroes with female characters wearing skimpy costumes after all.

I mean you mention Dust, she spends afaik a lot of her time in the X-Men wearing a hijab.

[The Romulan Republic]

Sell it all back to Disney and retire to my own island.....

Well, that works, though the intent was more "What sort of changes to Marvel continuity/writing/editorial direction/etc. would you like to see."

But you certainly have a practical mind.

I lack the interest, emotional investment, or business experience to run something like Marvel comics.

That, and any change I make will piss of at least some fans, so screw that, I'm buying myself an Island.

I'll just name it Genosha, and make sure the Marvel studios contracts include actresses spending time on the island with me

I don't think that's something you can stipulate in a contract, but then, I don't know contract law.

[The Romulan Republic]

Perhaps, but my point is that the bad writing has become so entrenched that it inclines me towards thinking that the only solution is a slash and burn approach.

And interesting metaphor since that's a massively wasteful form of agriculture. And writing.

Perhaps not the best metaphor. But I'm not sure how my proposal qualifies as "wasteful". Sure, you can't continue building on the old continuity directly. But you also clear away a lot of the dead weight, and open up new avenues for experimentation.

I suppose you can have (and Marvel does) have multiple continuities running side by side. But then, they'll start crossing them over, which rather defeats the point to me.

You want to solve bad writing. Hire better writers. That's it. That's all that's needed. Create a better product from where you are.

The problem is that those writers will still spend years shackled and weighed down by past baggage.

Take Star Trek, which would you rather have, given equal production values and writing a quality. A reboot series? or a post-TNG adaption of STO?

Depends on the writing quality of the reboot series.

But yeah, you've found my weak spot, since Trek a) has a history of dubiously executed reboots and b) I have a soft spot for STO.

It's not an either or situation. Bringing in a wider audience is not contingent on a reboot.

No, its not, but clearing away some of the clutter could certainly help.

It's contingent on writing stuff a wider audience wants to see. Continuity is actually a bonus here. You can spin people off popular comics. Introduce them in team books, before spinning them off. Attract audiences to new books. (aka Wolverine publicity, just don't over do it.)

I feel like you're taking reboot=better as axiomatic truth.

Err, no, I'm not.

I think that its a useful tool for facilitating creative freedom in long-running franchises. But you can have good reboots or shitty reboots, contingent on the skill of the people involved.

Apparently in a knee-jerk rejection of the popular opinion that it's not.

Please do not make assumptions about my motives, if you do not wish me to make assumptions about yours'.

I gave my reasons. You chose to ignore them in order to make this assumption.

Whoops, sorry I missed that. Perhaps because you said it in regards to something where I was explicitly talking about the MCU only.

Ah, we appear to have had a slight misunderstanding several pages back.

Ironically Marvel comics has done their big event Reboot recently, from what I read "Secret Wars" was in the vein of DC' Crisses/Zero Hours events that changed the comic history.

They've also started pushing female/minority heroes more. If they're not doing so well or as seen as competent any more it's because they're doing exactly what TRR wants.

You want to rephrase that in a way that doesn't make it sound like you're saying "they're failing because they have more women and minorities?"

And the usual "event" reboots are not what I'm talking about, I don't think. Those things happen all the time, and its my understanding that when these things happen, there is usually still some connection between the preceding and subsequent continuity.

I'm talking about a clean break. The old story lines end. They become their own, discrete universe/multiverse/continuity. We start anew, taking the basic character concepts and outlines and running in different directions with them.

[The Romulan Republic]

Edit: Said "pages" when I obviously meant "posts". Too late to edit, damn it.

[Crazedwraith]

-stuff-

TRR. I was trying to do the whole super huge number of quotes. But I feel I'm just repeating myself.

Suffice to say I understand what you're saying. And thank you for acknowledging there are good reboots and bad. I simply don't see the massive burden you consider continuity as. Yes it can be a factor but only if you write stories in such a way as being depending on it.

Sure you can could clear house a bit, but that burns out the good will of your existing fans of the characters you're are cutting and there's no guarantee of getting them back. This is what I was getting at with the Star Trek example. You've a real soft spot for STO, Marvel fans have a similar soft spot for the existing 616 continuity as is.

Basically reboot or not, you need good writing and I think the bar is raised higher for a reboot. Rightly or wrongly, fans hate change.

This I think covers your reply to my first post. If I've missed anything that you feel is a real oversight please do let me know.

Ironically Marvel comics has done their big event Reboot recently, from what I read "Secret Wars" was in the vein of DC' Crisses/Zero Hours events that changed the comic history.

They've also started pushing female/minority heroes more. If they're not doing so well or as seen as competent any more it's because they're doing exactly what TRR wants.

You want to rephrase that in a way that doesn't make it sound like you're saying "they're failing because they have more women and minorities?"

And the usual "event" reboots are not what I'm talking about, I don't think. Those things happen all the time, and its my understanding that when these things happen, there is usually still some connection between the preceding and subsequent continuity.

I'm talking about a clean break. The old story lines end. They become their own, discrete universe/multiverse/continuity. We start anew, taking the basic character concepts and outlines and running in different directions with them.

Now, in principle, more women and more minorities is good and interesting. This does not mean Marvel has been properly rewarded for doing so by fans and readers buying stuff. I admit I have no idea how Marvel's comics have actually been doing recently but I have seen internet articles with backlash against the extra women/minority characters.

I realise you mean a clean break, something similar to say the Ultimates line only without the mainline going on at the same time. (and considerably different in tone I imagine) I do get what you're saying and again in principle and theory it sounds okay. There are certainly smaller comic book franchises and lines that actually have a continuous storyline similar to what you mean and all the characters age in real time.(2000AD, some other independent ones, I think.) Grow up, grow out of their roles and are replaced with new ones. I know that's not quite what you are suggesting but it's similar.

I am perhaps being over harsh and critical about how it would work out in the real world though.

[The Romulan Republic]

Fair enough. And I may have come off a bit harsher in my initial criticisms of Marvel than I needed to be.

But its a rant born of frustration. Because I like superheroes as a concept and genre, I find them fascinating, and I enjoy watching the film and TV adaptations (and while not Marvel, I consider The Dark Knight one of my five favorite films of this millennium). Yet, a few well-known and mostly self-contained stories (mostly Batman) aside, I find it very hard to get into the comics. They're impenetrable, when they don't actively offend me.

I realize that to some extent this is an outsider's perspective, and that there's probably a huge gulf between my views and those of a typical life-long comics fan. But if I feel that way... I can only imagine how most members of the public would feel.

Now, you don't have to, and shouldn't, appeal to "the lowest common denominator". But I do think there is a problem where comics actively turn off a lot of readers outside of a relatively small niche.

[FaxModem1]

Run a limited series on the X-men and mutant sub-culture and how they like to force through peer pressure for their female members to wear revealing clothing, as shown here. For context, these are mutants who are living with the X-men, looking for a home. Either all women who have the mutant gene like to wear revealing clothing, or Scott and Logan don't give them real clothing compared to their male runaways who join up.

Have it star an existing character like Dust, or an original character, who wants to leave the mainstream mutant culture over how overly sexist it is and that the only way to be embraced by the X-men and mutants in general is conforming to their culture. IE, an allegory about fitting into a minority subculture's standards, when you don't fit the mold about being a standard member of that subculture, while also dealing with the very real problem of Marvel's double standard on women.

That seems a really mean spirited way to go about the issue 'women wear too skimpy outfits comics'. I mean I guess props for doing a story on it rather than just saying 'don't do it anymore'. But a story that says 'your heroes were really were pervy misogynists abusing their authority all along' is really kind of a shit move. These guys are supposed to be good guys in-universe after all.

And it's not like the X-Men are the only heroes with female characters wearing skimpy costumes after all.

I mean you mention Dust, she spends afaik a lot of her time in the X-Men wearing a hijab.

Schism really annoyed me on several levels, and the fact that Logan approaches the scantily dressed teenagers while offering them ice cream rubbed me the wrong way in contrast to how the scene was supposed to come across. If you like it better, I could have Emma Frost be the one doing it as she seems to have no shame showing off her 'assets', and having her as the only feminine figure in charge would explain some things about the X-men's domestic culture.

But unlike the Avengers or other superhero comics, the mutants are a subculture, and a fictional one at that. This means that whatever they're doing as a design choice, or as a team, is reflective and representative of mutants as a whole. It's time to deal with the implications of that.

I figure I either get nominated for an award, or get the boot, and life goes back to normal.

[Sidewinder]

I admit I have no idea how Marvel's comics have actually been doing recently but I have seen internet articles with backlash against the extra women/minority characters.

The problem is not the presence of these women and minorities, but the fact their introductions were handled incompetently. If I introduced a bunch of Asian women into 'The Ultimates', but each and every one of them is a literal WHORE who sells her body for cash, would you champion the resulting comic books as paragons of diversity? (Note: I'm of Chinese descent. I lost all respect for Garth Ennis because of the way he portrayed Asian women in 'Nick Fury: My War Gone By'.)

Jane Foster was acceptable as a Goddess of Thunder, but she was NOT acceptable as Thor, because "Thor" is a name and not a title- as I said to a clerk at comic book store, "If I said to your parents, 'Hi! I'm Scott [the clerk's name], your son!' are they going to buy it?"

Then there's the badly written introduction of America Chavez, which Micah Curtis highlighted in this video. Note his main conplaint isn't of the character's race and orientation, it's of the fact the comic book writer herself overemphasizes those traits, instead of the character's selflessness and heroism (or lack thereof- the book was badly written).

[Darth Yan]

Well, my intent would be less about restoring it to a particular point that I view through rose-tinted glasses, than about starting over with a more or less blank slate, so we can ditch the baggage of previous shitty decisions and take things in a new direction. Moving forward, not moving back.

That's not actually as relevant as you think.

People think comics have continuity, but they actually don't. They have eternal sameness, all these things that seem to change the status quo only do so for a while, and either gradually or suddenly it wanders back to the eternal sameness.

Marvel used to have continuity, back in the very old days things changed and by and large stayed changed, characters grew, had children, their children grew. It started out in real time, then time started to stretch, then it snapped completely and eternal sameness began. Characters reverted to archetypes and never really permanently changed from them, nothing could grow, nobody could move on. The appearance of continuity exists, but continuity does not. Only sameness.


So a "clean slate" reboot doesn't do anything that isn't happening anyway, things that don't get dramatically reverted to archetype quietly wander back to it as writers change.



So, given all power at Marvel, I'd let writers play with the existing archetypes to service the copyrights to make real money out of films on, whilst starting up a new stable of content much more along the Japanese model. Anthology books with a dozen or more stories on cheap stock from a dozen or more writers that can be sold everywhere, then republish the ones that turn out popular in higher quality TPBs that will look good in bookstores.

One of the reasons I liked Secret Wars 2015 is that real shit happened. The Fantastic Four has their story conclude, the Marvel Universe is reborn as the Prime one and Doctor Doom finally stops being a bad guy and lets go of his rage. The new series also has the implications explored; Doom really HAS turned over a new leaf but the other heroes are reluctant to trust him. At the same time, his mom (who abandoned him in disgust when she saw what he became) is trying to reconnect since she's happy to see him try to be a good person. More importantly, they can afford to keep Doom a hero without loosing money since Evil Reed Richards (the ultimate marvel version) is now running around in the main timeline (the general consensus is that Evil Reed IS actually pretty cool as a bad guy). Hell you can get a good story idea; Evil Reed is basically Doom so Doom is basically fighting the man he once was.

Chris Claremont for all his problems DID have his characters grow. The characters in the X men stories legitimately change, as do the characters of new mutants.

You know I came across a fan version of Avengers v Xmen called firebirds; It was better then the source material because it allowed itself to BE a story. Characters act believably, the action is good and it has a feeling of conclusiveness. There are more stories but real progress has been made.

I admit I have no idea how Marvel's comics have actually been doing recently but I have seen internet articles with backlash against the extra women/minority characters.

The problem is not the presence of these women and minorities, but the fact their introductions were handled incompetently. If I introduced a bunch of Asian women into 'The Ultimates', but each and every one of them is a literal WHORE who sells her body for cash, would you champion the resulting comic books as paragons of diversity? (Note: I'm of Chinese descent. I lost all respect for Garth Ennis because of the way he portrayed Asian women in 'Nick Fury: My War Gone By'.)

Jane Foster was acceptable as a Goddess of Thunder, but she was NOT acceptable as Thor, because "Thor" is a name and not a title- as I said to a clerk at comic book store, "If I said to your parents, 'Hi! I'm Scott [the clerk's name], your son!' are they going to buy it?"

Then there's the badly written introduction of America Chavez, which Micah Curtis highlighted in this video. Note his main conplaint isn't of the character's race and orientation, it's of the fact the comic book writer herself overemphasizes those traits, instead of the character's selflessness and heroism (or lack thereof- the book was badly written).

Ennis has done good work; the Boys actually had some pretty smart comments on how stupid a lot of the tropes are currently (the fact that crossovers are overdone, the fact that they often use rape as drama in the hopes it makes them kewl). It also makes it very clear that Butcher is still an evil man who has to die, and the relationship between Huighie and Annie was pretty good.

[The Romulan Republic]

You know, the more I think about it, the more I think one of the main challenges for a franchise that has multiple long-running interconnected narratives, especially ones that grew up from different sources that were later interlinked, like Marvel and DC, is to strike the right balance between interconnectedness and ability to stand alone.

On the one hand, the interconnectedness can lead to a richer universe, and a lot of fulfilment for fans, and can be an important part of suspension of disbelief if done well. I know a lot of people complain that the MCU isn't interconnected enough, particularly the films to the TV shows.

On the other hand, if everything is so interconnected that you cannot enjoy one story if you haven't seen/read all of the dozens of preceding related stories... well, to me, at least, that makes the individual stories unsatisfying, and the franchise impenetrable to newcomers. A good work of fiction should generally be able to stand more or less on its own if need be.

[Raw Shark]

Just to play devil's advocate for a minute here: What's so wrong with sexualized women in comics? I mean, I get why they do it on the meta-level, and agree that it would be good if there was more variation in character taste, but looking at it from an in-character perspective, if I was a woman with superpowers, I'd wear whatever the fuck I wanted. If I was a man with superpowers I'd wear whatever the fuck I wanted, for that matter. Shit, I'd go around naked like I do at home. Witness my super schlong, muthafuckas. Emma likes to look hot? Who's going to stop her? I'm sure as hell not.

"If you say the words 'boob window,' I will punch you into orbit." --Power Girl