What's better for a comicbook character? Retcon, or reboots?

[Adam Allen]

Except almost everybody wants the time progression to stop at their favorite characters. Legacy is okay until the new legacy superhero comes on the scene.

No, that's just it ... for me at least, I think I'd really prefer seeing even my favorite characters having their introduction as newbies, and the whole evolution until they are literally history. Like, when I started reading comics, the original X-Men should have been approaching middle age, and as much as I love those characters, I really didn't need them to stay in the spotlight forever. I would have been completely fine with Rachel just eventually replacing Jean, and for Hope to eventually replace Rachel. I mean, I basically consider time-displaced Teen Jean as a new character anyway, and I honestly feel like it's kind of a shame, that she's kind of overshadowed in what should be her own time, by her inevitably resurrected older "original" self.

I'm totally fine with newer characters replacing the older ones. Like, I was a huge Buffy fan, but I'm excited to see what a new series would introduce ... because the original series was about a teenaged character, introduced two decades ago. There's no way for the character as introduced at that time to just continue indefinitely and unchanging ... which is kind of what we try to do with comics characters. Jean Grey was introduced like 50 years ago, yet somehow the character is supposed to be vaguely in late adolescence, still ... as she was in the 70s and 80s too, when she was reinvented and reintroduced multiple times.

It's just crazy. I mean, it's just comics, I guess ... but yeah, I'm all for really letting even our most beloved characters just fade into old age and obscurity. Again, won't happen because of the moneyed interests ... but really is my vote, as a fan.

[DrNewGod]

No, that's just it ... for me at least, I think I'd really prefer seeing even my favorite characters having their introduction as newbies, and the whole evolution until they are literally history. Like, when I started reading comics, the original X-Men should have been approaching middle age, and as much as I love those characters, I really didn't need them to stay in the spotlight forever. I would have been completely fine with Rachel just eventually replacing Jean, and for Hope to eventually replace Rachel. I mean, I basically consider time-displaced Teen Jean as a new character anyway, and I honestly feel like it's kind of a shame, that she's kind of overshadowed in what should be her own time, by her inevitably resurrected older "original" self.

I'm totally fine with newer characters replacing the older ones. Like, I was a huge Buffy fan, but I'm excited to see what a new series would introduce ... because the original series was about a teenaged character, introduced two decades ago. There's no way for the character as introduced at that time to just continue indefinitely and unchanging ... which is kind of what we try to do with comics characters. Jean Grey was introduced like 50 years ago, yet somehow the character is supposed to be vaguely in late adolescence, still ... as she was in the 70s and 80s too, when she was reinvented and reintroduced multiple times.

It's just crazy. I mean, it's just comics, I guess ... but yeah, I'm all for really letting even our most beloved characters just fade into old age and obscurity. Again, won't happen because of the moneyed interests ... but really is my vote, as a fan.

As I said, I used to see it that way too. But that means Batman would have ended before O'Neal and Adams brought him back to form in the late '60s, Daredevil wouldn't have been around for "Born Again", there'd have been no Robin to lead The New Teen Titans, and the list goes on.

Most of all, it means that new generations wouldn't get to experience some of these characters as "their own." If they found them in back issues at all, they'd be more like the the way we experience long discontinued characters like Blue Diamond, or the original Guardian, relics of somebody else's time to which they have less of a chance to relate.

[The Darknight Detective]

No, that's just it ... for me at least, I think I'd really prefer seeing even my favorite characters having their introduction as newbies, and the whole evolution until they are literally history.

That's perfectly fine and, despite being a huge fan of the characters that are the barrier for true legacies, even okay by me if DC went down that road for keeps in the future. There's just not that many people who feel the same way, however.

[tib2d2]

I wish there weren't any "it depends" options. I like making folks make a definitive choice when it comes to polls, haha.

Re-boots are better, it doesn't wipe out what happened, it updates things for the current time.

[DrNewGod]

I wish there weren't any "it depends" options. I like making folks make a definitive choice when it comes to polls, haha.

Re-boots are better, it doesn't wipe out what happened, it updates things for the current time.

Supergirl would like a word with you ...

[jetengine]

Retcons are for the short term. Reboots the long term.

Reboots on the whole are generally better. People are annoyed about Post Crisis and Nu 52 because Post Crisis wasnt organised very well out the gate and had some poor writing to justify keeping everything (The Legion is always a problem with this and why I've always thought they should just drop them) or got annoyed that their favourite thing wasnt there.

Nu52 fell apart within a few months because it was never intended to be a line wide reboot, was uneven because of Batman and GL and generally had no real direction beyond "Those things you liked? Yeah we'll include them...sort of". Throw in the terrible writing etc and you've got an utter mess.

Still better then Marvel where 35 year old Peter Parker cant let his 90 year old aunt die so sells his marriage to the devil because rebooting him back to a teen is impossible so the only other way to mske him relatable is to be single.