New Loveletter tonight!

[Black Lantern Cliff Francis]

Batman, Superman, iconic, marketable, yadda yadda yadda.  Static.

The point is, they need NEW characters or they will die.  I don't care how much a part of the cultural fabric Wonder Woman or Spider-Man are.  The point is, how long can a comic company survive putting out regurgitated (in the case of Ultimates, literally regurgitated) stories about the SAME characters?  Or "new versions" of the same characters?  How long? 10 years?  25 years?  50?  If DC Comics doesn't have some new, interesting, original, breakthrough character in the next 50 years, I'm going to go out on a limb and say they'll be done as far as publishing new comic books.

[Marv-El]

That's a huge question about the nature of myth and storytelling. Sherlock Holmes has survived, but not regularly published. Ditto Tarzan, Dracula, and a couple others. The Bible stays in print, but that begs a few questions about myth and other reasons for popularity.

Comics may be done soon because publishing may be done soon. Many magazines  and newspapers are changing their formats right this minute, including vanishing. I work in publishing and we're seeing changes of many kinds (most of which my company is happily ostriching--oh, we'll be fine. Go back and set your type.) Does Superman need, and can he survive, updating? Needs it, probably. Survive it? Depends on how much you like Smallville, I guess. There's Jimmy with no bowtie, reporters with minimal newspaper presence, Clark dealing with his unearthliness. I know around here Smallville is a mixed proposition. I don't mind it in theory, I just don't think of it as Superman. Like Stephen King's Desperation and The Regulators: two riffs on similar stories with similar characters that reflect each other but have significant differences.

New characters? Nothing new under the sun, right? Superman is Doc Savage, Samson, Gilgamesh, Buck Rogers, Gladiator. Batman is Nosferatu, da Vinci's designs, and the Shadow. Spider-Man is...well, Batman, and Archie. Too cynical, but really, what's the difference? Is a really great Thor story lightyears away from a Wonder Woman story? Do the best stories tend to rely less on specific character elements, or is it essential that a Superman story reference Krypton and the Kents? Busiek and Alan Moore tend to find kernels in specific characters worth exploring, but they are the exceptions.

[measle]

Batman, Superman, iconic, marketable, yadda yadda yadda.  Static.

The point is, they need NEW characters or they will die.  I don't care how much a part of the cultural fabric Wonder Woman or Spider-Man are.  The point is, how long can a comic company survive putting out regurgitated (in the case of Ultimates, literally regurgitated) stories about the SAME characters?  Or "new versions" of the same characters?  How long? 10 years?  25 years?  50?  If DC Comics doesn't have some new, interesting, original, breakthrough character in the next 50 years, I'm going to go out on a limb and say they'll be done as far as publishing new comic books.

Just to fork the converstation a tinge... speaking of Ultimates... what a great way to take something that was supposed to be fresh, and then tie it to stories you already told.  WHat's the fucking point of that?  Everyone now is just waiting for the Ultimate Kree-Skrull war, Ultimate Dark Phoenix Saga, etc.  Ultimates completely lost the plot.

[Marv-El]

All of the Ultimate universe strikes me as the comic equivalent of the Vegas impersonator acts. Their degree of success hinges on either how well they recreate the original, or bring something new to the act. By that standard, I enjoy (guiltily) Spidey, did the FF and Ultimates. The others are disposable. And to carry the impersonators analogy farther, why go see a Cher lookalike instead of Cher? Or instead of buying the old albums if you don't have them? As long as Elton is alive, I don't need an Elton-alike.

[measle]

I think they needed to keep the Ultimate universe small, and have no or little crossovers.  Ultimates, while not entirely fresh (see Authority etc) was at least NOT the Avengers when it started.  The first 20 or so issues of Spider-man were also somewhat fresh.... ironically it seems Bendis was the first to cave and start doing Ultimate takes on specific 616 events.  But now they're just making another universe, and it's become as convoluted and beholden to continuity as the 616verse was.  Fuck, I think they even actually folded into a multiverse.  That's just the opposite of everything it was intended to be.  A playground for guys to get creative with Marvel archetypes without fucking up any continuity or Marvel characters.

[Marv-El]

Yeah, I think it's already too late to stop the Ult. U. from sliding that way. That's the thing about the creator mentality: since all things are now possible, all things should and must be incorporated: time travel, alternate dimensions and realities, resurrection. I don't know that I have a new suggestion, but I am tired of the same tricks all the time.

Also, the vocabulary of comics can trouble me. Fanboys: why? In addition to the sexism, do we need the juvenilization? Sports fans are just fans; why aren't we? "playground": any time a writer gets signed to an exclusive or takes over part or all of a franchise, he talks about how excited he is to get to "play in that playground." Juvenilizing again.  when a new director takes over Harry Potter or James Bond, he talks about getting to work with that mythology. Much classier and more appropriate to comics than Potter or Bond (Seven books vs. 70 years and millions of characters? Bond is bigger and simultaneously smaller because the source material is pretty well depleted and the movies have become their own continuity.) I'd much rather talk about comics mythology than the Marvel playground.

Man, still grumpy. If this were a bar you guys'd throw me out.

[measle]

I think that's on us.  Comic fandom needs to get it's house in order.  Yeah, there are extremists in every section of fandom.  Guys that have their entire week shot because their team of choice lost.  However, the extremists and the whackjobs amongst us have become the rule instead of the exception.   That's why I love the guys here.... we have people from all walks of life, and most of us have lifes outside of comics and toys.  THis is just one side of who we are, and I'd rather the site stay as small as it is forever than get a bunch of one line posters like the kind that frequent the AICN or Newsarama Talkbacks. 

[Marv-El]

Aw, meas is sending a loveletter to us, guys! He's so sweet.

You still can't have my mint set of 1977 blue series Star Wars cards, measle. 

[John Moores]

Could Booster Gold be the last really original hero of any worth to appear at DC?  Perhaps!

Steel? I never really liked him that much, but I thought he was a reasonable enough hero who didn't look out of place with the bigwigs of the JLA. They fucked around with him too much, though - I mean the Morrison JLA version. Yes, he started as a Superman stand-in, but (ahem...being more like Iron Man) he wasn't really anything to do with Superman than Elongated Man is like Flash or Zatanna is like Hawkman - both those B-Listers debuted in those A-Listers books, after all.

That said, I've not read the rest of this thread, yet.

[John Moores]

I got into a debate on He-Man.org once about someone who told me that Orko's "O" was just as iconic, and just as important as Superman's "S".

Oh, for fuck's sake. What a fucking dolt.

[measle]

Aw, meas is sending a loveletter to us, guys! He's so sweet.

You still can't have my mint set of 1977 blue series Star Wars cards, measle. 

What love?  I'd kill your ass for those cards if I ran into you on the street.

[John Moores]

The idea of a character more interested in being some kind of star or mogul than a hero.

Elongated Man? He was a publicity hound.

[measle]

Steel? I never really liked him that much, but I thought he was a reasonable enough hero who didn't look out of place with the bigwigs of the JLA. They fucked around with him too much, though - I mean the Morrison JLA version. Yes, he started as a Superman stand-in, but (ahem...being more like Iron Man) he wasn't really anything to do with Superman than Elongated Man is like Flash or Zatanna is like Hawkman - both those B-Listers debuted in those A-Listers books, after all.

That said, I've not read the rest of this thread, yet.

Steel's got the affirmative action vibe going for him, at least to me.  He doesn't seem organic like Mr. Terrific.  He seems like he was created for the soul purpose of diversifying the DCU.  That's not a bad idea at all, but the characters need to be legitimate.  You don't create Leaf-Man and put him in the JLA just because he's a black guy.

[John Moores]

Just to fork the converstation a tinge... speaking of Ultimates... what a great way to take something that was supposed to be fresh, and then tie it to stories you already told.  WHat's the fucking point of that?  Everyone now is just waiting for the Ultimate Kree-Skrull war, Ultimate Dark Phoenix Saga, etc.  Ultimates completely lost the plot.

Right. This is something that always came up in my reboot threads - the whole point of it is not to retell the same old stories. Or get back to acertain point. That defeats the object. After an origin retelling, everything should be fresh. Use the names, and that's it. And even then you can twist shit around so it's near unrecognisable.

[measle]

Right. This is something that always came up in my reboot threads - the whole point of it is not to retell the same old stories. Or get back to acertain point. That defeats the object. After an origin retelling, everything should be fresh. Use the names, and that's it. And even then you can twist shit around so it's near unrecognisable.

Exactly... I think you shouldn't even use the same cast of characters.  Like with Ultimate Spider-man, why use Mary Jane and Flash and Gwen Stacey and Aunt May....that's regular Spider-man.  It should come from the angle of "kid gets bitten/exposed to radioactive spider, gets spider powers....GO"  Go in a complete other direction.  What's the point of reskinning the same themes?  Make Peter Parker a black kid that grew up in the ghetto... you know?

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