Two choices for Main Canon DC: Legacy-Only or Constant Reboot?]!

[daBronzeBomma]

Poll forthcoming.

It's pretty clear that, from a continuity standpoint, half-assing it does not work for the DCU as a whole. Yet, ever since COIE concluded in 1986, that's exactly what DC keeps doing with retcons that dramatically affect some franchises and leave others completely unchanged.

So, presuming there will come yet another Crisis event that will muck things up again down the road ... what kind of continuity for the Main Canon DCU would you prefer out of these 2 choices?

A. Legacy - Only continuity: Everything happens in real - time, everyone ages in real time, death is permanent, EVERYONE eventually gets permanently replaced by successors including Clark, Bruce, and Diana, and then their own successors get replaced themselves.

B. Constant Company-wide Hard Reboot continuity: every 10-15 years IRL, everyone starts over from Day One, no matter how well they were selling right before the previous Crisis. Still real - time progression, but no one gets replaced in - continuity. The Single Identity Franchises remain the same anchor character (Clark, Bruce, Diana, Arthur, etc) in each reboot, but the Multiple Identity Franchises can have a new anchor character (Flash, Green Lantern, Hawks, Blue Beetle, etc) in each reboot.

That's it. Those are the two extreme choices. No more half -assing.

Either this is the very last reboot and everyone is getting replaced sooner or later

or

this is the first in a perpetual planned cycle of company -wide decade-long reboots.

Pick your poison.

[Sacred Knight]

If I could only pick between the two (and why not assume such for the sake of the poll), I'd pick B. Main reason is despite neither idea being optimal, the first option means I eventually lose Kal-El as Superman, Diana as WW, etc. And those aren't legacy characters. I would reject them being replaced and lose all interest.

[SiegePerilous02]

None of these appeal to me. Reboots never work unless they are planned well and they go all in (which DC has never been able to do). And proves too divisive in the long run. I think rebooting every couple decades could be good, it would allow versions of characters to go through permanent changes and they could always come back in the new continuity, where they don't necessarily have to go through the same arcs. It would allow things to be mixed up in every self contained continuity without needing them to be beholden to each other. But the way they generally do it now? Hard pass.

Legacy for me has only worked a few times: it's the main thing that is appealing about the JSA, and I like Wally and Damian as the Flash and Robin respectively. That's pretty much it though. Superman and Wonder Woman are not legacy characters and I have precisely zero interest in ever seeing it happen. Those characters are more than just names and costumes that can be passed down to anybody. Letting their stories end and having them retire or killing them off would be one thing, but let the DCU move on without a Superman II and Wonder Woman II. Saw it the first time, don't need a sequel thanks.

[Elmo]

honestly man no offense but threads like this make me sick to my stomach

there's no way you can say those are the only choices for the future of DC. you have no idea what they are planning or how the company works. threads like this are annoying because it just feeds the completely false narrative that DC has no idea what to do or where to go and wants to reboot again where all the same crap gets repeated over and over until someone makes another thread about it. just give it a rest

[skyvolt2000]

honestly man no offense but threads like this make me sick to my stomach

there's no way you can say those are the only choices for the future of DC. you have no idea what they are planning or how the company works. threads like this are annoying because it just feeds the completely false narrative that DC has no idea what to do or where to go and wants to reboot again where all the same crap gets repeated over and over until someone makes another thread about it. just give it a rest

Well Dc has proven at times they have no direction.
And guys like John Stewart are FOREVER stuck with the same boring stories dumped on them-because nobody wants to do development.

How about this for a choice? Leave well enough ALONE.

No option is going work without ticking off folks and HURTING the bottom line.
NO one wants to see Dick Grayson as Robin again. That means Tim & Damian's generation is gone.
No one wants to see the origin of Green Lantern start with Jessica Cruz instead of Hal.

Stop hiring writers who want to rewrite everything.
Find some writers who can build up guys NOT named Batman.

[The_Sneezing_Stormtrooper]

For my personally I'd choose legacy characters. I'm already a fan of many of the ones in place and it has been a major factor in many of my favourite runs over the years. It would also be nice to see a progression and natural evolution to the DC universe. So my vote went for what I'd want rather than what I think would be best.

Having said that, DC comics is more than just about the core comics. A majority of their business and new customers come from people who are familiar with the most popular and well known versions of the characters, which is why you mostly see legacy characters take over when a character is considered "stale". They are expected to both draw in customers and use their medium to promote merchandise and multimedia. It's easier for them to do both with a version of each character that is most in line with pop culture. It's important to remember that many attempts of legacy replacement have failed (though DC has a better track record with it than Marvel) and doing so line wide would be a huge risk at a point where the industry is already on shaky ground. I don't think it's as much about lazily retreading old ground as much as keeping themselves and their contemporaries employed.

Would a complete reboot be a solution to that? I don't know. You'd have a ton of fans leave. I know I might loose interest if this happened, as I personally did during the majority of new 52. Could you be assured that you'd bring in enough new readers when a majority would probably be more interested in a fresh movie or TV universe anyway? I don't have DC's sales data and I doubt I could answer that even if I did. How long did it take for the Ultimate universe at Marvel to become just as convoluted and build up a substantial catalog of back reading?

I get why they find the best solution is to just trim the fat off the universe every now and then. It's messy and it's usually unclear for what counts and what doesn't but it also allows them to have their cake and eat it too. I have my own head-canon for what counts and what doesn't in the Rebirth canon and that's probably what they ultimately want. This approach allows them to still sell old trades without discounting them, gives the creators a wider variety of characters to work on and a chance to cherry pick the bits of continuity they want to include. It's certainly not a perfect solution but I get why they see it as the lesser of all evils in this case.

The truth is that there is probably no clear cut answer.

[Dr. Ellingham]

A. Legacy - Only continuity

B. Constant Company-wide Hard Reboot continuity

Pick your poison.

Half-assing it, sort of. But really, it's none of the above.

Longtime comic shop goers care about continuity, crossovers, retcons, legacy characters, reboots, etc.

WB cares about profit.

Once the direct market goes away - meaning longtime comic fans are no longer driving the business - these elements that drove interest in the 1990s-2000s will no longer matter. All the Crises, legacies, multiple characters in the same role, etc.

[Buried Alien]

Reboot, but the window needs to be expanded to 25-30 years. Ten or even fifteen years isn't as long a time as it seems: Jason Todd has been back as the Red Hood for fifteen years. Barry Allen has been back for a decade. Damian Wayne has been Robin for a decade. All of it feels like just yesterday.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

[Aahz]

With 12 issues per year, which is roughly equal to 2 story arcs, a real time progression is for most characters way to fast imo.

[Digifiend]

Yeah, every comic would need to be weekly for that to work! Should be at least one in-universe year to four real years, which is how Marvel's sliding timescale averages out as. Justice League was formed 15 years ago in-universe? That would be 60 years ago in real life - which is 1958. It was actually in 1960, so that works out about right.

[Ascended]

Well, in a choice between lesser evils, I had to go with legacy-only.

I'd miss Clark, but I hate reboots with the passion of a thousand burning suns. Seriously, if my hate of reboots could be turned into a super power, I'd be ruling the earth by next week.

So I'll take legacy-only. There's still eighty years of back issues I can pick up.

[Robanker]

Reboot, but the window needs to be expanded to 25-30 years. Ten or even fifteen years isn't as long a time as it seems: Jason Todd has been back as the Red Hood for fifteen years. Barry Allen has been back for a decade. Damian Wayne has been Robin for a decade. All of it feels like just yesterday.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

Pretty much this. Either that or keep the same continuity and just play it more fast and loose. Part of the appeal is the history of these characters. When you watch a movie that gets you jazzed about them, you're not thinking "I need to get in on ground zero," it's "I want to read about what this character's been up to." At least it was for me. Deep diving into DC when I was still in school was an experience I'll never fully be able to express adequately, but there's lots of fun to be had. I've been doing everything I can to corrupt my girlfriend into being a DC fan too, and she absolutely loves some of the deeper cuts. I got her to share my love of Matter Eater Lad and Bouncing Boy for how silly they are.

Reboots are great jumping on points on the cover, but ultimately it somewhat invalidates the history of those characters because it doesn't "count" anymore. Hypertime, or a looser continuity you can revitalize every decade or so with a minor shake-up, is a better solution as I see it.

But real time is a terrible idea, frankly, for a medium that moves this slowly and with such recognizable characters.

[BatmanJones]

Poll forthcoming.

It's pretty clear that, from a continuity standpoint, half-assing it does not work for the DCU as a whole. Yet, ever since COIE concluded in 1986, that's exactly what DC keeps doing with retcons that dramatically affect some franchises and leave others completely unchanged.

So, presuming there will come yet another Crisis event that will muck things up again down the road ... what kind of continuity for the Main Canon DCU would you prefer out of these 2 choices?

A. Legacy - Only continuity: Everything happens in real - time, everyone ages in real time, death is permanent, EVERYONE eventually gets permanently replaced by successors including Clark, Bruce, and Diana, and then their own successors get replaced themselves.

B. Constant Company-wide Hard Reboot continuity: every 10-15 years IRL, everyone starts over from Day One, no matter how well they were selling right before the previous Crisis. Still real - time progression, but no one gets replaced in - continuity. The Single Identity Franchises remain the same anchor character (Clark, Bruce, Diana, Arthur, etc) in each reboot, but the Multiple Identity Franchises can have a new anchor character (Flash, Green Lantern, Hawks, Blue Beetle, etc) in each reboot.

That's it. Those are the two extreme choices. No more half -assing.

Either this is the very last reboot and everyone is getting replaced sooner or later

or

this is the first in a perpetual planned cycle of company -wide decade-long reboots.

Pick your poison.

I think there's a middle option that isn't half-assing anything and it's exactly what DC did from 1939 until 1985. Every story was true, legacies were intact, but it didn't mean that we couldn't continually read about our favorite characters.

There's a false dichotomy in "real time" vs. "constant reboots." Reboots were never ever necessary until CoIE made them necessary. If they'd never done that there would never have been need for reboots or continuity fixes. That's why I always refer to CoIE as DC's original sin. Once they pulled at that thread there was no option but to continually adjust and re-adjust.

DC could get back to that with a bold move: All stories you've read are true and they all happened and the multiverse is intact again. In other words, we go back to pre-Crisis rules.

I voted for Legacy over Constant Reboots because it's closest to what I want. But I don't see the logic behind insisting that characters age out in real time. Gigantic characters of any mythology can remain around the same age (a vague 28-35-ish except on Earth Two which is the reason for having an Earth Two) as long as editorial doesn't step in to muck things up. How do I know that? Because it's exactly how DC worked until they tried to 'simplify' continuity and, in doing so, wound up complicating it wildly and forever, the opposite of the intended effect.

Marv Wolfman was always concerned about the longterm effects of CoIE, though he wrote it, and back then he had a back door planned to get out of what they'd done with CoIE if DC wanted to use it. I don't know if Wolfman's way of reversing CoIE would work anymore (probably not) but there are a lot of ways to get back to those old rules.

I have some optimism that that is what D-Clock and the longform Rebirth story are trying to do.

[the illustrious mr. kenway]

I vote for option A as it allows the universe to move forward while having a constant source of jumping on points for any fan.

[SiegePerilous02]

To be fair sometimes even legacy characters dont stay. Not unless they are related to Batman.

Yes, and then we get the tedious fandom wars over which version was better, because the fans of the legacy character are understandably pissed that their preferred version got put on the back burner while the fans of the returning character are understandably overjoyed that their favorite is back and didn't appreciate them going away in the first place.

Retiring characters/writing them out/killing them off without replacing them with someone else wearing their costume would mean that IF they ever came back, we wouldn't have to get rid of their replacement in the process.

I think there's a middle option that isn't half-assing anything and it's exactly what DC did from 1939 until 1985. Every story was true, legacies were intact, but it didn't mean that we couldn't continually read about our favorite characters.

There's a false dichotomy in "real time" vs. "constant reboots." Reboots were never ever necessary until CoIE made them necessary. If they'd never done that there would never have been need for reboots or continuity fixes. That's why I always refer to CoIE as DC's original sin. Once they pulled at that thread there was no option but to continually adjust and re-adjust.

DC could get back to that with a bold move: All stories you've read are true and they all happened and the multiverse is intact again. In other words, we go back to pre-Crisis rules.

I voted for Legacy over Constant Reboots because it's closest to what I want. But I don't see the logic behind insisting that characters age out in real time. Gigantic characters of any mythology can remain around the same age (a vague 28-35-ish except on Earth Two which is the reason for having an Earth Two) as long as editorial doesn't step in to muck things up. How do I know that? Because it's exactly how DC worked until they tried to 'simplify' continuity and, in doing so, wound up complicating it wildly and forever, the opposite of the intended effect.

Marv Wolfman was always concerned about the longterm effects of CoIE, though he wrote it, and back then he had a back door planned to get out of what they'd done with CoIE if DC wanted to use it. I don't know if Wolfman's way of reversing CoIE would work anymore (probably not) but there are a lot of ways to get back to those old rules.

I have some optimism that that is what D-Clock and the longform Rebirth story are trying to do.

Preach.

I do wonder if Doomsday Clock and whatever this Crisis we may or may not end up getting will lead to a restoration of the pre-Crisis multiverse. The Superman that is married to Lois and fathered John is pre-Crisis Earth-1 Superman who has his history and also experienced some variation of the major post-Crisis stories (death and marriage, characters like Steel and Kon being present) before ending up where he's at now. Wonder Woman wouldn't really fit, but she never does unfortunately, and we have the broad strokes needed. Restoring Donna to some semblance of her old origin would be the best we could hope for as far as that goes. It could be why they are holding of on Shazam until Doomsday clock finishes, maybe it will be on Earth-5?

The things that make me doubt that idea is that they seem dead set on keeping the JSA on the main Earth, so restoring the full roster of legacies and as much of the history as possible on Earth-2 seems doubtful. As well as Cyborg being a JL founder and not with the NTT, though they seem to change their stance on that every other week.