Constantly tinkering with the past or moving forward?

[caj]

Which do you prefer:

a) tweaking a hero's past, rewriting their history, 'fixing' problems
b) leaving the past alone and developing the character based on history - even if the history is 'flawed'
c) a mixture of both - fix what needs fixing but not to the point where a new history is rewritten every few years
d) something else

[cranger]

Just keep moving forward.

Good stories will recognize good stories.

Bad stories will happen from time to time, but don't waste more time trying to fix them.

[Güicho]

Most characters and concepts that have lasted long, have because they have a recognizable foundation in plot narrative, and character type that make them work.
You don't betray that.
However the past should be taken as loose canon, (fans (and creators) that are sticklers for harping on every detail are the problem), sometimes bad writers come in not right for the character, and insert garbage that needs to be ignored, or written around, or re-interpreted. There needs to be room for that, or you end up with constant reboots.

There needs to be a fluid past, treat it as stories told, but not everything written in stone, with plenty of ongoing wiggle room for modernizing and reinterpretation and invention, yet still recognizable.
That's whats made these characters last so long.

[Ascended]

I vote "C" but only insofar as looking back to the past is necessary; either fixing a major screw up that can't be ignored, or using the past to fuel a new story. Outside of the minor stuff like that, move forward, evolve, advance.

But you have to make sure your on solid footing too, and sometimes you gotta handle a previous creator's mistake or you want to add a new layer to a previous event.

If it were up to me, we'd treat continuity a lot differently than we do. I think fans and creators let it become a chain around the characters' necks more often than they use it to build up and forward.

[Restingvoice]

What's considered flawed is subjective. Some of them are objectives, such as if a past of hero includes him committing racism, misogyny, homophobia or stuff like that if the purpose is keeping them alive, fresh, eternal and to be admired by a lot of people.

So assuming there's something like that, it's understandable that a company selling eternal superheroes would want to rebrand them for the current and future generation so they can keep them admirable and inspirational eternally.

In that case, I have no problem.

My problem is if there's no problem with the past, but they change it and the result changes the message of the hero and/or the story.

Do I need ten secret stories of what happened between when Bruce first become Batman until he adopted Dick Grayson? No, but as long as they don't change the character's motivation or personality that will lead him to adopt Dick Grayson or change his view on crime in the future because those two points already happened, then it will be fine and it may be fun to read.

Do I need a villain to secretly destroy Krypton if the message of the story is how arrogant people ignore the effect of their actions on the planet? No, and adding that will change the message of the story, so don't do that.

[Frontier]

I vote C. Sometimes things need fixing but not to the point of a wholesale reboot.

[dietrich]

Keep moving forward

[caj]

Constant rewrites and retconning is the major reason I quit reading current comics.

[Jon Clark]

I don't know if there is a right answer.

I don't need a whole story to explain how Jim Gordan was a Gotham cop when the Waynes died but was a recently arrived from Chicago cop in Year One. Or to see a dozen variations on when Clark first met Bruce. I don't really care why the Guardians didn't intervene when Krypton went boom. But if a writer has a truly interesting tale that takes place in the present which spins out of telling one of those things, I don't want to stand in the way by barring stories about the past or making changes to the past.

[caj]

I don't know if there is a right answer.

I don't need a whole story to explain how Jim Gordan was a Gotham cop when the Waynes died but was a recently arrived from Chicago cop in Year One. Or to see a dozen variations on when Clark first met Bruce. I don't really care why the Guardians didn't intervene when Krypton went boom. But if a writer has a truly interesting tale that takes place in the present which spins out of telling one of those things, I don't want to stand in the way by barring stories about the past or making changes to the past.

I don't mind a re-telling of the past with a few tweaks here and some new ideas there. But if it wipes out decades of continuity, then you've gone too far.

[qwertyuiop1998]

I want to vote C, But as from I can remember. only few writers could pull this off, other writers just making things worse

So bakcing one step to say: I will Vote B. At least this solution just needs a writer good enough to telling a story

[BohemiaDrinker]

Reboot every 15 years!

[Jim Kelly]

They should just keep going forward and ignoring things that don't work in the present context. Don't try to erase or retcon the past. It may happen that some writer (Grant Morrison) had a good idea for how to use that ignored thing in the past--and because it hasn't been erased or retconned, he can still pick it up and do the good idea that he had. As times change, the things we ignore change, because some things are cool to us now and will seem stupid later, while other things that seem stupid now can always come back into favour later on when we've come back around to liking them.

[Sacred Knight]

Main verse just move forward. They're never going to fix anything, its just way too broken after 30 years of ill-planned quasi-reboots. Only a full-on reboot would work now and they don't want to do that. So leave it alone. Create a secondary line (Ultimate for the most recent comparison) that starts over with a clean slate. Best of both worlds. Said line fits in if you cull books from other failed initiatives like New Age of Heroes. I respect trying to do stuff like that, but it never works. Fan interest just isn't there. On the other hand, despite how some might call it derivative and frankly they wouldn't be that wrong, I'd be willing to bet starting over with the familiar names would have more success.

[Adekis]

I vote "C" but only insofar as looking back to the past is necessary; either fixing a major screw up that can't be ignored, or using the past to fuel a new story. Outside of the minor stuff like that, move forward, evolve, advance.

But you have to make sure your on solid footing too, and sometimes you gotta handle a previous creator's mistake or you want to add a new layer to a previous event.

If it were up to me, we'd treat continuity a lot differently than we do. I think fans and creators let it become a chain around the characters' necks more often than they use it to build up and forward.

"Fans and creators" is right. There's a whole fan culture that makes it pretty much impossible to move forward, because fans are constantly debating about what the past should be, and if we don't know what it is, we freak out. I include myself in this, mind you. I'm not innocent. But take Superman for example, since he's such a loud instance of this problem (and because let's face it, he's the character I'm kind of an expert on compared to the rest of DC). There was a period there where we got a new Superman origin at least like once every two years! There's been like ten of them in the last fifteen years or so! That's way too much, but now that his backstory is relatively vague and the writers are trying to move forward, we're complaining about it, including me. It's pretty stupid, honestly. We shouldn't do that.