TF Views

For the last few years Marvel has been doing DC's old gimmicks, focusing on idea centered writing and pushing boundaries, and going it better than DC. (One of the reasons that I have been under-whelmed with Spider-Verse is that it seems too much like retro-DC for my liking. "A Spider-Man/Woman/thing one every world....") This move makes sense.


Marvel has been implying a reboot for almost 3 years now. (There were credible rumours about AvX setting up for this.) "Age of Ultron" was explicitly billed as the start.

The problem with "Age of Ultron" is that it seemed like too much hype and set-up for an event that was too far off in the future. But, it led directly to the incursions. It specifically "broke time", removing "possible futures" and some past events from 616.


No two ways about it. (If this plays out any other way, I am likely to be very annoyed.)


The incursions have yet to destroy any recognized timelines. But, "Spider-Verse" has accounted for a few established Spiders. And, other recognized timelines were established as having been destroyed in "Mighty Avengers". (One of them was the home of Iron Man 2020. This happened just as a new Arno Stark was being introduced in the pages of Gillen's "Iron Man".)

Given the way that things are playing out in Hickman's Avengers books, a reboot might be the only way out. The Illuminati wiped out a planet, and the implication was that there may have been another solution. That is a tough thing to ignore and write around. A number o

A reboot for Marvel would make sense. They could streamline and redesign the 616 without the more dated elements. (If they want to keep Black Widow, they need to wipe out the Cold War references, which were laughably dated 15 years ago.) How many back-written fixes does 616 have, even purely necessary ones? (That discounts problems caused by feckless editing and self-indulgent writers.)

Stories like "Armor Wars" were years ahead of their time in some ways. But, they are dated in others. Those can be tossed. Problematic stories like "One More Day" or the the Clone Saga can be fixed or removed in one move without regard for how changes in one book would spiral out to other books. Clumsily rebranded characters like Star Lord or Drax could be refined to made more consistent with the movies. (This process has already begun with "Infinity Revelation".)

Characters with licensing issues could be rectro-actively down-played or extirpated. (It is commonly accepted that Marvel is cancelling "Fantastic Four" for movie license reasons.)

I know what I am reading next year.

Dominic wrote:For the last few years Marvel has been doing DC's old gimmicks, focusing on idea centered writing and pushing boundaries, and going it better than DC.

I'd have to disagree with you. Marvel has been focusing on shock value and events with very little thought the past few years more than ever. There's a reason why I've been avoiding Marvel's titles. Sales starting to drag? Time to needlessly "kill off" someone, just to bring them back in a year or two. Or time for another event to change the status quo forever, or at least until the next event comes along that changes things yet again. It's almost predictable.

The only reason why this has my attention is because... it's so unlike Marvel. Really I think Marvel could use the refresher mostly to clear out a lot of the mistakes they've made in the past few years.

Just be careful what you wish for. Marvel might be well advised to not throw the baby out with the bathwater like DC did. Once they jump on the reboot bandwagon, there's no telling what might be jettisoned. You might not like the end result. Yes, DC got rid of Cry for Justice and the New Krypton storyline and other creative dead ends, but they got rid of a lot of good history and backstory as well.

And it wasn't really necessary. DC had great sales in 2006 and 2007, the year that Infinite Crisis came out and the year after. But someone dropped the ball somewhere, because enough sales were lost over the three years following that DC was desperate enough to reboot in order to create buzz and get people to check them out again. From the numbers I've seen, the best year of the New 52 is about the same as 2007 sales and have started back on the downward trend, though they're still beating anything from 2008-2010. I'm only an occasional Marvel reader, but I'd hate to see them sacrifice 50 years of history for a short term sales gain.

I'd honestly love to see the big two just "end" everything and just start from scratch. And to start with some new rules in place. Namely: Dead is dead, no bringing anyone back. No backwrites or contradictions. And no more cosmic gibberwank. And time travel and/or time altering stories should be extremely discouraged. I think this would make for a much more cohesive story going forward.

Hey, cosmic gibberwank has its place. How you gonna do the New Gods? What about Galactus? Thanos?

Sparky Prime wrote:Or time for another event to change the status quo forever, or at least until the next event comes along that changes things yet again. It's almost predictable.

This part is really funny to me because it almost perfectly defines DC as I've seen them the last few years. In fact, I initially dropped DC because they were the ones engaging in the behaviors you were describing above ("Blackest Night" being one long conga line of shock value and superficial status-quo shake-ups).

And it's interesting, because I'm not sure what Marvel titles you're looking at (as I said, I generally avoid their events) but the books I'm reading are pretty much the opposite. New Warriors, Ms. Marvel, All-New Ghost Rider, Inhuman, as well as the now-completed Superior Spider-Man, all solid, focused, heavily idea-centric stories that rely on establishing characters and concepts and situations, rather than shock value or hype-grabbing shake-ups (Superior Spider-Man did admittedly start that way, but it quickly proved itself to be something completely different).

anderson wrote:Just be careful what you wish for. Marvel might be well advised to not throw the baby out with the bathwater like DC did. Once they jump on the reboot bandwagon, there's no telling what might be jettisoned. You might not like the end result.

I love endings, so as long as Marvel ties everything up decently with this Big Event and starts well fresh with a plan in place, I won't worry too much. Part of it might be because I've only been reading Marvel for a year or two, so I'm not exactly engrossed in or attached to their history, but it's also because I understand that comic books I liked don't just blink out of existence because they got retconned. You can always go back and read enjoyable stories, even if they don't 'count' anymore.

Six wrote:Hey, cosmic gibberwank has its place. How you gonna do the New Gods? What about Galactus? Thanos?

It's time for Thanos to become a grounded character again! He needs to get back to his glory days of being defeated by Squirrel Girl, and Hostess Fruit Pies!

BWprowl wrote:

Sparky Prime wrote:Or time for another event to change the status quo forever, or at least until the next event comes along that changes things yet again. It's almost predictable.

This part is really funny to me because it almost perfectly defines DC as I've seen them the last few years.

I have to agree, this is par for the course for DC.

You can always go back and read enjoyable stories, even if they don't 'count' anymore.

That's mostly what I read these days. Or I read back issues that I haven't read before. Hey, they're "new" stories to me.

andersonh1 wrote:Just be careful what you wish for. Marvel might be well advised to not throw the baby out with the bathwater like DC did. Once they jump on the reboot bandwagon, there's no telling what might be jettisoned. You might not like the end result.

Not everyone hates the New 52 as much as you do, and DC didn't throw everything out.

BWprowl wrote:This part is really funny to me because it almost perfectly defines DC as I've seen them the last few years. In fact, I initially dropped DC because they were the ones engaging in the behaviors you were describing above ("Blackest Night" being one long conga line of shock value and superficial status-quo shake-ups).

There's no denying that both companies use that strategy. The difference however is the DC never made it a company policy to kill off a character every quarter like Marvel has. And Marvel keeps getting progressively worst with it. And Blackest Night did not change up the status quo, nor was it meant to be shock value. It was a story Johns had been building towards ever since Rebirth in expanding the Green Lantern mythos. DC decided to make it a much larger event, which makes sense given the scale of the dead rising as zombies.

And it's interesting, because I'm not sure what Marvel titles you're looking at (as I said, I generally avoid their events) but the books I'm reading are pretty much the opposite. New Warriors, Ms. Marvel, All-New Ghost Rider, Inhuman, as well as the now-completed Superior Spider-Man, all solid, focused, heavily idea-centric stories that rely on establishing characters and concepts and situations, rather than shock value or hype-grabbing shake-ups (Superior Spider-Man did admittedly start that way, but it quickly proved itself to be something completely different).

Are you kidding? Superior Spider-Man was one of the worst offenders. At its core, it really was yet another death of the hero, shock-value as the villain takes over his life, event. And then they put the status quo back by bringing Peter back just in time for ASM2 to come out in theaters. Oh yes, that was such an original storyline and not at all a predicable end. And you're wise to avoid their event story lines. There are a few I thought started out interesting, but the endings left more to be desired.

At its core, it really was yet another death of the hero, shock-value as the villain takes over his life, event. And then they put the status quo back by bringing Peter back just in time for ASM2 to come out in theaters. Oh yes, that was such an original storyline and not at all a predicable end.

Did you even read any of it at all?

Sparky Prime wrote:Not everyone hates the New 52 as much as you do, and DC didn't throw everything out.

So now he has both perspectives. All I know is that huge chunks of stories and history that I followed and enjoyed no longer count in the current universe. Robinson's Starman. The entire Wally West Flash series. JSA. The friendship between Green Lantern and Green Arrow is gone. Morrison's 90s JLA series is out. Every incarnation of the Teen Titans before the New 52 version is gone. Scores of second generation heroes no longer exist. On and on it goes.

They may not have thrown everything out, but they threw out a substantial amount of history and characters. I think it would be a real shame if Marvel did the same thing.

I guess if none of that has any meaning for you, you're good. Yeah, I still have my old issues and can still read them, but the fact that they don't count in the current DC cosmos makes current DC much less appealing.

Here's hoping Convergence is good.

Are you kidding? Superior Spider-Man was one of the worst offenders. At its core, it really was yet another death of the hero, shock-value as the villain takes over his life, event.

It certainly used that as the starting point, but I thought Superior went forward and actually told an interesting story, as well as greatly developing Doc Ock as a character. In other words, the story went beyond just "villain takes over hero's life, how is he going to get it back" to actually examining how someone as predisposed towards doing the wrong thing as Doc Ock was would function after being forced into the role of a hero. Could he rise above his nature and actually make some good choices? I thought it was a pretty strong series overall.