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Underground > Comic Books >

Big Two's Different ways of dealing with rebirths

04:34 / 13.11.04

Okay, it's early, I can't sleep, so sorry if this is weak or badly typed/thought out.

Just interested in the way others see the big two's differing ways of constantly restarting their universes.

DC seem, post-crisis, to feel the need to return to the same tale again and again and retell it again and again (pre-crisis it was more a case of just dump new stuff in and we'll make it fit), year one's, rebirth's etc, but adding new ideas or new spins. New Frontier was interesting, but existed out of actual continuity, or so I believe, and it seems that any idea that deviate from a set character template is dumped into elseworlds, just in case, like.

Marvel on the other hand, seem more interested in creating new continuities for their new spins, some work, others don't (New Universe? for example, although there was some links implied through the beyonder) but in real marvel U they would rather keep adding to the old continuity.

As a result DC characters seem to have stagnated but the ideas grow, where as Marvel characters seem to have grown but the ideas have stagnated (ironically Marvel allow the continuity to be added to but constantly return to the same ideas, big shake ups include the return of dead characters, old creative teams and the same shoking events - Avengers Disassemble is hardly a new idea, they used to shake the team up every couple of years - Cap leaves, too many members, need more branches etc).

There are, it has to be said, a lot of badly writen books around at the moment, so I haven't been following as closely as I used to, so I may be way off the mark.

Do you find that DC's constant restarts has forced them to keep the crisis' coming? Would Marvel benefit from a crisis event? Does one or the other methods make one or the other more or less likely to admit their errors (spiderman clone for example)?

Ultimately, what works for you.

13:57 / 14.11.04

Well, the reason you get different styles of reboots is because the companies' overall continuity works differently.

Marvel pretty much invented comic book continuity the way we think of it back in the 60s. Characters changed and evolved (okay, you can argue on this point, but in theory there are character arcs) over the years, so if you do a DC-style reboot on one of them, you lose everything that's happened to the character since the first appearance. Marvel is pretty heavy on history in this way.

DC characters are more iconic and therefore flexible. Or at least, their bigger icons are, as 2nd tier guys like Wally-Flash and Kyle-Green Lantern, etc. are more Marvel-style heroes. But Superman, as a character, doesn't grow and change over the years (and it's arguable that he, in fact, shouldn't) so if you refresh him with an altered origin, you don't really "lose" a whole lot of character stuff, only niggling continuity bits. With the new Superman revamp and the Doom Patrol restart, a lot of the hardcore continuity people are having trouble figuring out where past stories "fit," which is why I can't believe everyone pooh-poohed Hypertime a few years back when it fixed this problem PERFECTLY SIMPLY without you needing an encyclopedia to wade through the continuity.

This is also why DC has Elseworlds which take the same character concept and radically alter the character details (Batman...in the Old West! Superman...landed in Russia!) whereas Marvel's What If?s take the same basic mainstream characters and alter smaller-scale plot details (What if Spider-Man joined the Fantastic Four? What if Rick Jones had been the Hulk?) There's no "What if the Fantastic Four were a quartet of Victorian-era Jules Verne-esque explorers?" Although that having been said, I would probably buy that book.

Crazy DC continuity does have its advantages, though. I'm only 20 so I wasn't exposed to them the first time around, but retroactively I really miss Superman being able to lean over the JLA roundable and say "People, we have 24 hours to save the people of Earth-Q or the multiverse will tear itself apart!"

Our Lady Has Left the Building

18:55 / 14.11.04

I should point out that when Marvel tried to reboot all its characters wholesale that was rejected and they had to return to the status quo (Heroes Reborn?), so they have to create the seperate Ultimates universe to do it for them.

20:36 / 14.11.04

But see, the interesting thing about Marvel's reboots is that they're mostly reinterpretations of existing stories. All that I read of Heroes Reborn FANTASTIC FOUR was the first six issues, but it wasn't anything terribly revolutionary story-wise, just a sort of condensed, updated "movie version" of 50+ issues of Lee-Kirby stories (Mole Man, Sub-Mariner complete with the same ocean monster he used in his first Silver Age appearance, Doom siphoning off the Silver Surfer's power, etc.)

It's the same with ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN. Most of the stories are just updates based off of the original stories. They even do the bridge scene (both in Ultimate and in the movie) although the outcomes are different (which frankly destroys the whole point of the scene). Conceptually, Ultimate books aren't even all that different from the "Marvel Age" books.

Or even that horrible John Byrne "Chapter One" Spider-Man deal. Those stuck relatively close to the original Lee-Ditkos, as opposed to MAN OF STEEL, which were for the most part all new stories. And I bet the new DOOM PATROL series he's working on isn't using specific MY GREATEST ADVENTURE stories as strict templates.

Basically, there seems to be an editorial consensus within Marvel that the stories were essentially "done right" the first time and that they just need a bit of retouching from time to time, whereas DC seems to believe it has weaker source material and so completely revamps franchises. The musical metaphor is that Marvel relaunches are cover versions of old Stan Lee stories, and DC samples from and remixes their iconic characters.