By the way, I’ve read reprints of the Superman story from the 1970s that removed kryptonite as a threat by having all the stuff on Planet Earth get turned into harmless iron (I think it was iron?), but by the time I was a kid buying some DC titles in the early 1980s, that had obviously been undone. Just how long did that attempted “shake-up” to his status quo actually last before he started having Lex Luthor (or whomever) wave Green K in his face at the drop of a hat, same as before?

I will say that I never cared all that much about Barry Allen. I have a lot of his adventures from his solo title in the late 70s and early-to-mid 80s, but what I’ve read of them doesn’t leave me breathlessly waiting for dozens of issues’ worth of the same kind of stuff that Cary Bates was writing about Barry for so many years. Whether or not Barry would eventually come back from the dead for keeps was not a question which kept me awake at night.

On the other hand, I completely disagree with the theory that Hal Jordan, as of the late 80s and early 90s, had become a fundamentally unwriteable character. I enjoyed the way Gerard Jones handled him in the first couple of years of the “Green Lantern” title which began in 1990 — although I freely admit that the Gerard Jones run was going downhill in the later issues, before “Emerald Twilight.” But I don’t see that as proof that the character was getting worn out and useless. Just that Jones should have handed the reins over to a different writer much sooner than actually occurred.

I literally do not understand why DC doesn’t have three distinct imprints that have their own “universes” targeted to different segments of readers. To me, it is a no-brainer that you should have:
- A G-Rated universe targeted to kids that are coming over from the animated shows with Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Justice League and the Teen Titans.
- A PG-rated universe that is targeted to fanboys who have collected their various titles since they were kids.
- An R-rated universe that is accessible to adults that are dabbling in comics (maybe for the first time) after being exposed to movies and TV series. It would have a Batman that would immediately familiar to viewers of “The Dark Knight” and a Superman that is accessible to fans of “Smallville” and “Superman Returns”. Plus, versions of the rest of the “Big 7? that are consistent with those characters.

Well we have the Animated Series style comics, the main DCU, the Wildstorm Universe and the Vertigo universe. The big difference here obviously is that only the first two I listed actually share their own versions of the same characters.

i also agree that DC need to give their comics a rating system. Seven-year-olds would soon start reading comics again if Marvel and DC marketed them properly.

I started reading DC when you could go to the local newsagents and buy a hundred page comic for 25p.

I finally deleted that portion on the grounds that it was too vague to definitely be an example of “Apathy” when it could just as easily have been “Ignorance” instead, and I figured this entire post was getting too long anyway!

John Seavey — as a matter of fact, when I was doing last-minute revisions to this, it did occur to me that “Green Lantern: Rebirth” could probably serve as an example of more than one of the items I had listed, but it was late and I decided to just leave my brief comments about that the way they were.

On point 1: hey, look again at the story where Damien’s conception is shown. The scene shown in the flashback looks like it’s from “I now pronounce you Batman and Wife”, not from “Son of the Demon”. Morrison just retconned some fun before Talia being knocked out by her Lover. Since Talia disappeared for quite a while after that story, it’s feasible. The baby thing brings up the reference to “Son of the Demon”, quite commonly. But if you look closely, it’s not.

I couldn’t find my copy at first, but now I’ve checked. Toward the end of “Batman #656″ (the second issue of Morrison’s first arc), Talia says to Batman: “But have you forgotten that night you and I shared under the desert moon above the Tropic of Cancer?”

At the top of the next page, Batman responds: “I remember being drugged senseless and refusing to co-operate in some depraved eugenics experiment. That night, maybe?”

Batman’s description sounds nothing like events portrayed in “I Now Pronounce You Batman and Wife,” nor the events of “Son of the Demon” when the two of them were living together for months.

My understanding is that Morrison, even before the first issue of his run saw print, had led people to believe he was dusting off the baby from “Son of the Demon.” I had certainly heard those rumors before I ever bought the first issue of his run a few years ago. I don’t think it was just a case of fans jumping to conclusions re: which old story about a Batman/Talia romance Morrison might be inspired by.

(Incidentally, didn’t the “wedding” from the late 1970s happen on a ship just outside the legal boundaries of the USA, near Gotham City, as opposed to their being in a tent in a desert at the time, as Talia describes in Morrison’s dialogue?)

And Morrison himself has said:

GM: Well, Damian plays into a few story ideas that will become more central as we get to the end of RIP. I always loved the idea of Batman having a kid from Mike Barr’s Son of the Demon story. That was the initial inspiration for doing a grown-up ‘evil’ son, even though I hadn’t read the story in years and couldn’t remember what happened in it! (laughs)

That last quote is what I had in mind when I said, in the last paragraph of my discussion of #01 on this list, that Morrison has conceded that he didn’t bother to refresh his memory before writing the scripts which introduced us to his version of the child of Batman and Talia.

One major motive for reboots has been the growing maturity of comic readers.

I literally do not understand why DC doesn’t have three distinct imprints that have their own “universes” targeted to different segments of readers. To me, it is a no-brainer that you should have:
- A G-Rated universe targeted to kids that are coming over from the animated shows with Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Justice League and the Teen Titans.
- A PG-rated universe that is targeted to fanboys who have collected their various titles since they were kids.
- An R-rated universe that is accessible to adults that are dabbling in comics (maybe for the first time) after being exposed to movies and TV series. It would have a Batman that would immediately familiar to viewers of “The Dark Knight” and a Superman that is accessible to fans of “Smallville” and “Superman Returns”. Plus, versions of the rest of the “Big 7″ that are consistent with those characters.

If you look at the DC characters with the most tortuous back stories, you invariably find that these are the heroes with the most childish origins. Writers keep throwing more and more story at them to hide their innate silliness.

To me, this is just more of a case for periodic hard re-boots.

Hawkman (and Hawkgirl) have a one thing going for him: a great visual. The wings and old weapons look cool. That matters in comics. The Silver Age back-story about Thangar has, indeed, become hopelessly silly. Ironically, the Golden Age version has aged much better.

So … why not ditch everything except the visual? Let some hungry, young talent take a run at re-building those characters from the ground up?

Aquaman has a bit more going for him. The basic concept of who is as comfortable under the water as on land is solid enough. Watch the Pilot for the TV series on iTunes sometime. Arthur Curry is kind of an interesting protagonist. The dead family are a big part of the problem there. It is too sad. The other piece is that there isn’t much mystery to the Atlantean culture in Aquaman. They are blue and have a quasi-Monarchy. **Yawn**

Most of DC’s biggest characters were created in the ‘Forties and ‘Fifties and squarely aimed at seven-year-olds. When the Stan Lee revolution happened in the ‘Sixties, the average age of a comic reader increased to about 14-years-old. By the late ‘Sixties, DC felt that they couldn’t ignore the Marvel phenomenon and in response started to up-date their own characters. So Batman erased Aunt Harriet from continuity, sent the Boy Wonder to college and played down the Batmobile and Batcave. The Wonder Woman series killed off Steve Trevor and turned the lead into a hot, white-suited kung fu babe. Green Lantern’s ring was reduced in power and Hal Jordan gained a social conscience. Speedy became a junkie. And so on and so forth.

By the ‘Eighties, the average age of a comic fan had aged still further and DC felt obliged to reboot their characters even more dramatically, but this created a tension. DC had to maintain a balance between the key elements of the original character and creating a new status quo suitable for a more mature readership. Getting this balance right was tricky.

George Perez’s reboot of Wonder Woman emphasised that she was a Greek Amazon princess sent to the Man’s World as an ambassador for Paradise Island and to further the cause of women’s rights. She does all this while draped in the Stars and Stripes – an unlikely costume for a Greek ambassador to wear. Perez does address the origin of the costume and comes up with a rather rum old plot about honouring Steve Trevor’s mother, but the real reason is that Wonder Woman is one of the most iconic images in comics and she sells a lot of lunchboxes, so Perez was stuck with the Stars and Stripes costume whether he liked it or not.

If you look at the DC characters with the most tortuous back stories, you invariably find that these are the heroes with the most childish origins. Writers keep throwing more and more story at them to hide their innate silliness.

Aquaman is the son of a mermaid and can talk to the fishes. Slaughter his family, chop off his arm, change his outfit and he is still the son of a mermaid, who can talk to the fishes. Hawkman flew across the galaxy in a spaceship, but now fights crime bare-chested with a mace. That is a tough one for even a seven-year-old to accept.

Actually I’d forgotten about that. At the time I didn’t really think of that as a dig at the FF storyline but a natural reaction that may set up a future storyline. Looking back now it could be taken as a bit of a slam (Lilandra calls Reed a fool, and her hologram is sprung on the Richards in bed together, which didn’t make them look terribly dignified or powerful in the exchange).

Now I’m curious how much of that was setting up the Trial of Galactus story in FF (which it did do nicely) and how much was Claremont having a few panels to kill so why not mention, “What’s up with saving Galactus?” Probably more of the latter, given the history between the two creators.

I think it depends. I like continuity from the standpoint that I value characterization, and without some semblance of continuity, you can’t get what a character is all about or what the role of the character is in the larger narrative. That’s part of what bothers me about them bringing Barry Allen back. He not only was a paragon as a hero in his comic life, but served a very important role in his death not only in the storyline (saving the universe), but also in motivating and defining Wally West’s character. Now you can toss that all out window, more or less.

That said, I like a lot of out of continuity stuff. Some of my favorite stories are things that are “what ifs” or “elseworlds” kinds of stories. There are also times where I think there needs to be a retcon simply because the storytelling was…odd (one that sticks out is the X-Men storyline a few years ago…think it was right before Morrison…where they killed/mindwiped Magneto in Genosha and then went out for a beer at the end of the book; just didn’t make sense to me…or why exiting writers on X-books kill Magneto consistently, but that’s another rant).

Maybe it just boils down to a) how important the story was to the character/plot of the book and b) whether it was well written as to why a retcon does or doesn’t bother some of us.

I don’t think the 1986′s reboot of Superman was motivated by an aesthetic desire to streamline the character. Rather, it’s been caused by at least 2 decades of Superman comics dwindling in sales. The same can be said of Wonder Woman and the Perez reboot.

I’d like to think I was pretty easy-going about continuity, but the “grudge” category always bothered me. I remember reading those Byrne stories that would poke holes in the X-men issues, and even as a kid who was otherwise blissfully ignorant of inter-office politics, I found the pettiness pretty glaringly obvious.

The Dr. Doom robot thing was the most blatant, and Byrne personally called Lilandra a witch when she put Reed on trial for rescuing Galactus (he had written himself into the story). The X-men was my favorite comic, so this sort of stuff bugged me.

Interesting that Claremont wanted to shoot back. I’m glad he ended up staying above it all, even if it was due to the editors’ watchful eyes.