If DC does a company-wide Hard Reboot in the future ...

[Gaius]

One change I'd make in a hard rebooted Batman would be to go back to the interpretation Bruce Wayne is the real person while Batman is the mask.

[Tzigone]

I honestly could go for a total hard reboot, that erases Year One, as well as others that I find either highly boring or highly overrated, such as Killing Joke, and Death In the Family.

I though I was the only one with no love for Year One or The Killing Joke. Plenty of people think Death in the Family poorly crafted, as I learned after joining this board.

I think Batman is so tainted at this point due to things off and on from the 80s before the current management was in charge.

But I do 100% agree that if/when we ever get another reboot, we need new people behind it to give it a chance. One who preferably took notes from before Batman got Miller'd

I personally agree with your opinion - though I do like some later editions to the fam - that Batman's grim dark and damage and the way he tests others has ruined/tainted him for me to a large degree (and recently, i think other damage has been done to Dick and Tim), but i cannot deny this Batman moves product. Maybe I am just too out of touch with mainstream.

[Gotham citizen]

I though I was the only one with no love for Year One or The Killing Joke. Plenty of people think Death in the Family poorly crafted, as I learned after joining this board.
[…]

I think you two aren't the only ones.

[scary harpy]

I honestly could go for a total hard reboot, that erases Year One, as well as others that I find either highly boring or highly overrated, such as Killing Joke, and Death In the Family.

I think Batman is so tainted at this point due to things off and on from the 80s before the current management was in charge.

But I do 100% agree that if/when we ever get another reboot, we need new people behind it to give it a chance. One who preferably took notes from before Batman got Miller'd

I though I was the only one with no love for Year One or The Killing Joke. Plenty of people think Death in the Family poorly crafted, as I learned after joining this board.

I personally agree with your opinion - though I do like some later editions to the fam - that Batman's grim dark and damage and the way he tests others has ruined/tainted him for me to a large degree (and recently, i think other damage has been done to Dick and Tim), but i cannot deny this Batman moves product. Maybe I am just too out of touch with mainstream.

I think you two aren't the only ones.

I have no love for Year One, Killing Joke or Death in the Family.

I'm for a hard reboot or a fresh start...meaning we move new Earths and start over there.

I imagine a fresh start to be Earth 2021 (JLA) and Earth 2022 (JSA).

[Gotham citizen]

What do you mean with "hard reboot or fresh start"?
I ask because in my mind those terms have very different meaning: in all three cases the writers start to write their stories without refer to the previous ones, but with a fresh start (or restart if you prefer) the old stories aren't cancelled from the continuity (it is what Morrison did with his New X-men), with a soft reboot (or simply reboot) the old stories are substituted by new origins (it is what the DC did with Crisis on the Infinite Earths), but in both cases no one change the status quo of the various franchise/characters, while with a hard reboot (or reset if you prefer) the status quo of the various franchise/characters is heavily changed (it is the approach adopted by the author of X-men Evolution).

[Tzigone]

I don't want a hard reboot. I don't like the idea of reboots. I like characters having their history. But continuity is so snarled and certain characters burdened with prior actions that I think reboot or sweeping under the rug are the only solutions. Either way, I would look forward to actual history and knowing what's what. I'm not fond of "it all happened" - I think certain versions are contradictory and cannot work together. Seeing Identity Crisis brought back into canon didn't make me smile, either. I do think some stories were just crap that deserve to be erased. Problem is they often had knock-on effects, and besides different people think different stories were good/bad.

I don't think a totally clean slate reboot makes sense. It alienates the fans reading now, and (without substantial changes to business side of things) is not going to draw in new readers to make up for the loss. Not it's back at origins (don't really need to see origins again for most of them) and lacking a lot of the spin-off characters. I mean characters like Black Lightning or Firestorm can easily be introduced earlier than they were the first time around, but the spinoff and "family" characters are a different story.

[scary harpy]

What do you mean with "hard reboot or fresh start"?
I ask because in my mind those terms have very different meaning: in all three cases the writers start to write their stories without refer to the previous ones, but with a fresh start (or restart if you prefer) the old stories aren't cancelled from the continuity (it is what Morrison did with his New X-men), with a soft reboot (or simply reboot) the old stories are substituted by new origins (it is what the DC did with Crisis on the Infinite Earths), but in both cases no one change the status quo of the various franchise/characters, while with a hard reboot (or reset if you prefer) the status quo of the various franchise/characters is heavily changed (it is the approach adopted by the author of X-men Evolution).

I'll try.


Soft reboot: character A returned to nearly the beginning of her/his super-heroic career...but character B is not.

Soft reboots is what DC did in the past: they rebooted Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman but didn't reboot Teen Titans because it was selling well. About 10 years later, Titans was not selling well...but had created a huge mess in Continuity that did not end with Titans cancellation.

Hard reboot: return all characters to the beginning (or nearly the beginning) of their super-heroic careers. In a hard reboot, Wonder Woman, Superman, Batman and etcetera would have only begun super-heroics about 2½ to 3¼ years ago. All history is erased.

Fresh start: All characters are near the beginning of their super-heroic careers. On this Earth, Wonder Woman, Superman, Batman and etcetera would have only begun super-heroics about 2½ to 3¼ years ago. All history is preserved...on another Earth (but it didn't happen here).

Hard Reboots and Fresh Starts are similar...but the former erases all past stories while the later leaves the continuity mess on alternate Earths.

[Tzigone]

Batman himself is low on the list of my favorite Bat characters, so I'm not keen on ditching the bulk of the rest for a while so he can start over again (and especially if he ends up with different people around this time as Ollie and Iris and even somehwhat Lois and Clark did).

I do use different definitions of soft reboot and hard reboot than you do. Soft reboots to me are Kara in Rebirth or even Donna when her family was killed and she was given a new origin story and new role/supporting cast. Or Ollie's reworking in early bronze age or when Aquaman got a whole new backstory and became Orin.

Regular reboots are explicit and actively erase significant portions of history and acknowledge that reality has changed.

[Gotham citizen]

I'll try.


Soft reboot: character A returned to nearly the beginning of her/his super-heroic career...but character B is not.

Soft reboots is what DC did in the past: they rebooted Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman but didn't reboot Teen Titans because it was selling well. About 10 years later, Titans was not selling well...but had created a huge mess in Continuity that did not end with Titans cancellation.

Hard reboot: return all characters to the beginning (or nearly the beginning) of their super-heroic careers. In a hard reboot, Wonder Woman, Superman, Batman and etcetera would have only begun super-heroics about 2½ to 3¼ years ago. All history is erased.

Fresh start: All characters are near the beginning of their super-heroic careers. On this Earth, Wonder Woman, Superman, Batman and etcetera would have only begun super-heroics about 2½ to 3¼ years ago. All history is preserved...on another Earth (but it didn't happen here).

Hard Reboots and Fresh Starts are similar...but the former erases all past stories while the later leaves the continuity mess on alternate Earths.

Perfect, so you call soft reboot what I would call partial reboot, you call fresh start something similar to what DC did with Earth-1 and Earth-2 or Marvel did with the Ultimate comics and for you a hard reboot is something similar to a fresh start, but with the end of the old titles and their continuity.

[Aahz]

I have no love for Year One, Killing Joke or Death in the Family.

I like Year One and Killing Joke, but Year one is imo to down to earth and 80s to really fit in the current continuity, and Killing Joke doesn't really have in continuity imo.

Death in the Family is just not well written, that thing has way to many plot contrivances.

[Gotham citizen]

I don't want a hard reboot. I don't like the idea of reboots. I like characters having their history. But continuity is so snarled and certain characters burdened with prior actions that I think reboot or sweeping under the rug are the only solutions. Either way, I would look forward to actual history and knowing what's what. I'm not fond of "it all happened" - I think certain versions are contradictory and cannot work together. Seeing Identity Crisis brought back into canon didn't make me smile, either. I do think some stories were just crap that deserve to be erased. Problem is they often had knock-on effects, and besides different people think different stories were good/bad.

I don't think a totally clean slate reboot makes sense. It alienates the fans reading now, and (without substantial changes to business side of things) is not going to draw in new readers to make up for the loss. Not it's back at origins (don't really need to see origins again for most of them) and lacking a lot of the spin-off characters. I mean characters like Black Lightning or Firestorm can easily be introduced earlier than they were the first time around, but the spinoff and "family" characters are a different story.

I agree (if I have understood you): a hard reboot would alienate a lot of old readers, without capture new ones. But in my humble opinion a soft reboot wouldn't solve all the issues of continuity, so I think a reboot should be something in the middle to work: it should restart all the titles/characters/franchise from a status quo very close to the old one, in order to not alienate the old readers, but at the same time it would solve all the issues of the old continuity and above all this reboot should be preceded by an accurate work to analysis of the old continuity, in order to understand what went wrong, what was good and if there are good ideas/characters that haven't been exploited correctly, because without this work every reboot will fail like the New 52 failed.

[millernumber1]

I agree (if I have understood you): a hard reboot would alienate a lot of old readers, without capture new ones. But in my humble opinion a soft reboot wouldn't solve all the issues of continuity, so I think a reboot should be something in the middle to work: it should restart all the titles/characters/franchise from a status quo very close to the old one, in order to not alienate the old readers, but at the same time it would solve all the issues of the old continuity and above all this reboot should be preceded by an accurate work to analysis of the old continuity, in order to understand what went wrong, what was good and if there are good ideas/characters that haven't been exploited correctly, because without this work every reboot will fail like the New 52 failed.

I feel like you've hit on the problem - because you simply cannot solve the issues of the old continuity. Because the issues are often subjective, and blown in different directions by fads in both creators and fans. The real problem is bad writing and poor marketing, not continuity itself. A good writer can always find a way to tell a good story within continuity. A bad writer can't tell a good story without.

[Gotham citizen]

Actually not: I wanted answer to this post:

I don't want a hard reboot. I don't like the idea of reboots. I like characters having their history. But continuity is so snarled and certain characters burdened with prior actions that I think reboot or sweeping under the rug are the only solutions. Either way, I would look forward to actual history and knowing what's what. I'm not fond of "it all happened" - I think certain versions are contradictory and cannot work together. Seeing Identity Crisis brought back into canon didn't make me smile, either. I do think some stories were just crap that deserve to be erased. Problem is they often had knock-on effects, and besides different people think different stories were good/bad.

I don't think a totally clean slate reboot makes sense. It alienates the fans reading now, and (without substantial changes to business side of things) is not going to draw in new readers to make up for the loss. Not it's back at origins (don't really need to see origins again for most of them) and lacking a lot of the spin-off characters. I mean characters like Black Lightning or Firestorm can easily be introduced earlier than they were the first time around, but the spinoff and "family" characters are a different story.

but I quoted the wrong one.
Anyway I agree with you: the solution is the good writing, not another reboot.