Thoughts on the current Batfamily line? Things you like? Things you’d change?

[scary harpy]

I think the objection to a true hard reboot is this: is that kind of drastic action really the only way to perform this “enema”?

We know that half-arsed reboots are not way…because that’s all DC’s done every time and we jump from one hot mess to another hotter mess.

Looking back on the Post-Crisis set-up... the franchises that wound up being healthiest decades later were the ones that had the least hard reboots - Batman, Flash, and Green Lantern.

Batman only had Jason Todd’s story get hard rebooted (everything else was repackaged at a leisurely pace... and was still subject to being honored or ignored depending on how later creators viewed it), Green Lantern only gained Alan Scott as a same-world inspiration, and Wally became Flash while explicitly acknowledging Barry’s reign as the Flash.

They weren’t the exceptions…they were the problems.

You can’t reboot the JLA to year 1 and keep the Titans at year 5; if you do, then Donna the Wonder Girl would have been around years before Diana the Wonder Woman (and, oh wait, that’s exactly what happened)!

As you said, DC, in it’s finite wisdom, picked and chose who and what was rebooted. In the long run, this bad idea produced tremendous internal conflict: we never knew what story had happened and what did not. DC was continually having to create patches for plot holes!

That would not have happened if everyone and everything had been rebooted.

Not coincidentally, Flash was much more damaged by the harder reboot of the New 52, Green Lantern barely flinched because it barely had anything more than a few more lines added to the costumes, and the Batman books wound up being a weird miasma where the stuff that was least touched by the reboot was the healthiest - Damian, Bruce, Jason and Dick arguably struggled the least, while the Batgirls and Tim suffered the most.

That’s right…we had still 5 Earth Green Lanterns, 4½ Robins and 3 Batgirls.

And this simplified the DCU, uh, how?

Flash’s problem was how badly Wally was treated. If Wally hadn’t been erased, I don’t think there would have been as much backlash. I agree that it’s not fair to keep Kyle and Tim and Cassandra but we lose Wally when he was a major hero for decades. I assume this is the damage you were talking about.

[godisawesome]

We know that half-arsed reboots are not way…because that’s all DC’s done every time and we jump from one hot mess to another hotter mess.



They weren’t the exceptions…they were the problems.

You can’t reboot the JLA to year 1 and keep the Titans at year 5; if you do, then Donna the Wonder Girl would have been around years before Diana the Wonder Woman (and, oh wait, that’s exactly what happened)!

As you said, DC, in it’s finite wisdom, picked and chose who and what was rebooted. In the long run, this bad idea produced tremendous internal conflict: we never knew what story had happened and what did not. DC was continually having to create patches for plot holes!

That would not have happened if everyone and everything had been rebooted.




That’s right…we had still 5 Earth Green Lanterns, 4½ Robins and 3 Batgirls.

And this simplified the DCU, uh, how?

Flash’s problem was how badly Wally was treated. If Wally hadn’t been erased, I don’t think there would have been as much backlash. I agree that it’s not fair to keep Kyle and Tim and Cassandra but we lose Wally when he was a major hero for decades. I assume this is the damage you were talking about.

Actually... I’m someone who doesn’t think that breadth and width of franchise lore is an asset - to me the problems caused by the reboots of COIE and the New 52 was on the characters who received a harder reboot... largely because creators either wanted to bring back previous pieces of lore or to reintroduce them, and the catch about any reboot in the same medium as it’s original material is that you have to hope you do a *better* job than the original... and that’s hard to do.

While I’m someone who thinks that military brat Lois Lane and Bussinessman Lex Luthor were great additions to Superman's lore, both could have been implemented without a hard reboot all at once, while the hard reboot aspects of forbidding other Kryptonians from existing and ejecting Superboy from the story caused issues, while the New 52’s attempt to try throwing out all of the Post-Crisis stories inevitably screwed over the “present” Superman stories they were trying to tell apart from Morrison’s retelling of the origin.

Green Lantern was the strongest overall property post-Flashpoint for a while because they kept everyone - having so many Green Lanterns didn’t slow down sales at all. Batman was strongest as a franchise the further away you were from unnecessary reboot elements - it was better to deal with Damian being a ten-year old son of Batman behind Dick and Jason than it was to try and insist that Tim wasn’t a Robin, or that Babs was the only Batgirl.

To me, the big catch with trying to do a hard reboot in the same medium as the original stories is that it requires taking everyone back to square one... and then trying to do a better job than the previous stories, and consistently and quickly too.

That’s less of a problem in mediums with less material and lore to work with - if you have to try and one-up just one iteration of a story that only has a few entries, you’ve got a better chance of improving on a good basis. Rebooted movie continues, even ones that have been rebooted numerous times, still have an accomplishable goal - Matt Reeves’s Batman does have to deal with the shadows of the 60’s movie, the Burton films, the Nolan films, and the early DCEU... but that’s still a comparably small affair if put up against the huge lore of comics.

And that’s the thing: Comics, as time has moved on, have compiled ungodly amounts of material that was increasing in quality as time went on. The standards comic reader expect and hold their favorite characters and properties to is too high to just try and retell *everything* at once - you might be able to improve on a handful of elements for a while, but eventually you’ll stumble because of the pace you’ve demanded of yourself. If you hard reboot the Batman characters now, you have to try and nail introductions and character arcs for Bruce, Alfred, Joker, Gordon, Babs, Harvey Dent, Selina, Talia, Ra’s Al Ghul, Riddler, Bane, Jason, Tim, Damian, Tetch, Black Mask, and everyone else and all in succession... or accept that you can’t use some of those character for a long time, and possibly leave money on the table.

Oh, and you’ll have to try and hope your work compares favorably to the works of O’Neill, Dixon, Morrison, Miller, Wolfmann, Grant, Moore, and Brubaker. It’s one thing to try and one up an overworked Bill Finger’s work at the dawn of the comic book industry, it’s another to take on his more valued and refined successors after decades of literary evolution.

You’d be better off doing what the Batman, Flash and Green Lantern books did Post-Crisis: avoid a hard reboot, keep telling the current status quo’s stories, and be willing to redo things if creators want to, but also willing to ditch those changes if people start to forget about them.

Legends of the Dark Knight introduced a Freddy Krueger-gloved serial killer as a new version of Thomas Blake the Catman... and no one really complained when years later they just introduced a more familiar version of the character, or when Simone reworked him again in Secret Six. Arisia got murdered by Major Force, but no one lost interest when Johns ignored that for a different fate in his Green Lantern retcons. Grant Morrison managed to write multiple epics that basically say “everything happened! Somehow!” and it worked.

I’m in favor of creator determined reconfigurations, but not hard reboots.

[scary harpy]

Actually... I’m someone who doesn’t think that breadth and width of franchise lore is an asset - to me the problems caused by the reboots of COIE and the New 52 was on the characters who received a harder reboot... largely because creators either wanted to bring back previous pieces of lore or to reintroduce them, and the catch about any reboot in the same medium as it’s original material is that you have to hope you do a *better* job than the original... and that’s hard to do.

I also don't think that breadth and width of franchise lore is an asset...that's why I willing to reboot it all away.

To me, the big catch with trying to do a hard reboot in the same medium as the original stories is that it requires taking everyone back to square one... and then trying to do a better job than the previous stories, and consistently and quickly too.

...

And that’s the thing: Comics, as time has moved on, have compiled ungodly amounts of material that was increasing in quality as time went on. The standards comic reader expect and hold their favorite characters and properties to is too high to just try and retell *everything* at once - you might be able to improve on a handful of elements for a while, but eventually you’ll stumble because of the pace you’ve demanded of yourself. If you hard reboot the Batman characters now, you have to try and nail introductions and character arcs for Bruce, Alfred, Joker, Gordon, Babs, Harvey Dent, Selina, Talia, Ra’s Al Ghul, Riddler, Bane, Jason, Tim, Damian, Tetch, Black Mask, and everyone else and all in succession... or accept that you can’t use some of those character for a long time, and possibly leave money on the table.

Oh, and you’ll have to try and hope your work compares favorably to the works of O’Neill, Dixon, Morrison, Miller, Wolfmann, Grant, Moore, and Brubaker. It’s one thing to try and one up an overworked Bill Finger’s work at the dawn of the comic book industry, it’s another to take on his more valued and refined successors after decades of literary evolution.

Yes, it's a big challenge. Since DC purports to seek new audience, they should be willing to rise to this challenge.

You’d be better off doing what the Batman, Flash and Green Lantern books did Post-Crisis: avoid a hard reboot, keep telling the current status quo’s stories, and be willing to redo things if creators want to, but also willing to ditch those changes if people start to forget about them.

...

I’m in favor of creator determined reconfigurations, but not hard reboots.

I'm in favor on no more half-arsed refreshes. DC tried this again and again...and it doesn't work.

[godisawesome]

I also don't think that breadth and width of franchise lore is an asset...that's why I willing to reboot it all away.



Yes, it's a big challenge. Since DC purports to seek new audience, they should be willing to rise to this challenge.



I'm in favor on no more half-arsed refreshes. DC tried this again and again...and it doesn't work.

The biggest problem DC Comics has is that comics are a consistently dwindling niche market - particularly when it comes to direct purchase of individual issues. “Lore” has very little to do with the unlikelihood of a young kid or teenager purchasing a new issue of Detective Comics from the stands - that has far more to do with how few easily accessible comic shops there are mixing with how much better of a deal it is to purchase a trade paperback rather than a single in the bookstores that carry both, or to find a bookstore in the first place.

The digital marketplace offers up a new avenue for increasing the number of new readers... and the ease of access to digital copies of long ago also removes the “need” to replicate successful stories for new readers - rather than saying “We must tell ALL the first Batman stories again!” you could say “Start with Year One/Zero Year, then check our Long Halloween, then Dark Victory, etc.” and save money on development, maintain high quality, and be able to basically just keep new readers rolling through a vast amount of still-modern writing. And those who do fall in love for those older stories are primed to accept a massive and expansive world when they seek out modern stories... in which case you’ll want to be able to offer them a full menu in front of them.

[scary harpy]

The biggest problem DC Comics has is that comics are a consistently dwindling niche market - particularly when it comes to direct purchase of individual issues. “Lore” has very little to do with the unlikelihood of a young kid or teenager purchasing a new issue of Detective Comics from the stands - that has far more to do with how few easily accessible comic shops there are mixing with how much better of a deal it is to purchase a trade paperback rather than a single in the bookstores that carry both, or to find a bookstore in the first place.

This is the truth behind all DC Crises...it's a cash grab.

The "Crisis" boosts sales and profits very temporarily...any other goal is quickly forgotten.

Also forgotten is any continuity or organization. This aggravates older fans and confuses any newer fans (so they probably leave for Marvel).

The digital marketplace offers up a new avenue for increasing the number of new readers... and the ease of access to digital copies of long ago also removes the “need” to replicate successful stories for new readers - rather than saying “We must tell ALL the first Batman stories again!” you could say “Start with Year One/Zero Year, then check our Long Halloween, then Dark Victory, etc.” and save money on development, maintain high quality, and be able to basically just keep new readers rolling through a vast amount of still-modern writing. And those who do fall in love for those older stories are primed to accept a massive and expansive world when they seek out modern stories... in which case you’ll want to be able to offer them a full menu in front of them.

Then DC can put all older issues online and focus on new stories...preferably set on a new 'Earth' without a ton of backstory to weigh it down.

Let all past continuities exist on some other Earth (and in the online archive).

[Aahz]

Batman only had Jason Todd’s story get hard rebooted (everything else was repackaged at a leisurely pace... and was still subject to being honored or ignored depending on how later creators viewed it

Year One and the Legends of the Dark Knight Series competently rewrote his early years and the origins of most his villains, and most of the pre COIE stuff (especially the really wacky golden and silver age stuff) was out of continuity.

[godisawesome]

Year One and the Legends of the Dark Knight Series competently rewrote his early years and the origins of most his villains, and most of the pre COIE stuff (especially the really wacky golden and silver age stuff) was out of continuity.

Year One was still predominantly a creator-driven project, and was also still more of an “Untold Tale” than a true retcon in presentation - Batman had first appeared in Detective Comics #27 in his costume, after all, and even the Bronze Age hadn’t yet done a beginning-to-end origin retelling.

Tales of the Dark Knight, and Batman Confidential years after it, both run around in and have fun with Batman’s earlier years, and attempt to “fill-in-the-blanks” where they can, and replace stories where the creators think they can do better... but no creator on another project ever treated it as an unbreakable gospel that they couldn’t contradict: LOTDK’s Catman from Heat was ignored without much fanfare or complaint when people wanted to do a more traditional version of him, and the Lovers and Madman arc with Joker in Confidential contradicted The Man Who Laughs and the Gotham Knights arc with Joker... but none of that caused any fuss apart from whether or not those individual arcs worked for the audience.

Those stories are strong arguments in favor of both “flashback” oriented titles *and* a flexible approach to continuity, like the kind most of the superstar writers use, instead of the kind of inflexibility that a hard reboot would require.

Basically... I don’t see any good reason to close off and declare certain characters and eras “off-limits” of a writer and artist want to use them. If what you want to do is give potential new readers good “jumping on” material, you can do that just by crafting stories set-up to do that - in whatever part of the timeline and status quo you want.

The people and kids likely to pick up a comic and read it have already done the hardest point of recruiting them - I really don’t think that these mythical potential readers who look at lore and go “Oh my, I couldn’t possibly explore any of this! It’s too complex!” exist; we live in a day and age of everyone carrying a smartphone that can download any issue, and where a google search could easily take them to any starting point they could handle.

[scary harpy]

Batman only had Jason Todd’s story get hard rebooted (everything else was repackaged at a leisurely pace... and was still subject to being honored or ignored depending on how later creators viewed it), Green Lantern only gained Alan Scott as a same-world inspiration, and Wally became Flash while explicitly acknowledging Barry’s reign as the Flash.

Aahz addressed Jason's story. (Thanks, Aahz.)

Green Lantern only gained yet another Earth male Green Lantern. We can never have enough of those.

Wally became Flash after Barry's Death. That was accepted for decades...until Barry came back. In serial storytelling, dead characters come back; I would not have it any other way.

But...Now what? Wally becomes Red Flash? un, No. Barry re-became Flash while explicitly erasing Wally's reign as the Flash. That turned out well.

[Aahz]

Tales of the Dark Knight, and Batman Confidential years after it, both run around in and have fun with Batman’s earlier years, and attempt to “fill-in-the-blanks” where they can, and replace stories where the creators think they can do better... but no creator on another project ever treated it as an unbreakable gospel that they couldn’t contradict: LOTDK’s Catman from Heat was ignored without much fanfare or complaint when people wanted to do a more traditional version of him, and the Lovers and Madman arc with Joker in Confidential contradicted The Man Who Laughs and the Gotham Knights arc with Joker... but none of that caused any fuss apart from whether or not those individual arcs worked for the audience.

Imo you can't really compare Batman Confidential with LOTDK. At the point they did Confidential they kind of started to have a looser continuity.
For example I don't think that Morrison would have been allowed to bring back all the silver age stuff if he had been on Batman in the 90s.

[godisawesome]

Imo you can't really compare Batman Confidential with LOTDK. At the point they did Confidential they kind of started to have a looser continuity.
For example I don't think that Morrison would have been allowed to bring back all the silver age stuff if he had been on Batman in the 90s.

While I think that Morrison’s power to do what he wanted was definitely the product of his clout more than anything else, LOTDK had a similar looser continuity to Confidential whenever LOTDK was set in the past. It’s Cavalier and Catman were pretty much exclusively characters from that series who never had an impact on the versions in the modern books.

Both were examples of flexibility in continuity - they showed how using the passage of time and continuity could, be used to tell a good story, but they didn’t tie any creator’s hands in other books. You could use stuff from it if you wanted to (see: Devin Grayson’s work in Gotham Knights) or ignore it if you had a better idea (see: Gail Simone’s work in Secret Six).

I’d rather let good writers use any character they wanted or any story they want to construct their own. I’ve yet to see a system in comics where that actually backfired - inevitably, the higher quality work will get remembered, while the lesser one could still be used if you want to.

[Swallowtail]

[QUOTE=scary harpy;5016447]I also don't think that breadth and width of franchise lore is an asset...that's why I willing to reboot it all away.


A hard reboot doesn't fix things, it just guarantees that the same stories get told for the nth time. If you rebooted Batman back to Year One, how long would it be before he's going to be fishing Joker out of the resevoir o having Bane crack his L2 over his knee? What value added does retracing these stories bring for a new reader, particularly the Batman stories, which are so well known and have been replicated so many times in more consumption friendly media?

If I want to see how Dick Grayson got his start as Robin I can see the DCAU version, the Young Justice version, the Titans version, the Batman and Robin version. Same with Knightfall, No Man's Land or Under the Red Hood. Don't want the original version, try the movie version, or the lego version. What entices a new reader to come and be told that story again?

The big advantage the majority of the A list Batman characters have is that they have enough cache that they don't need to be reintroduced. Yes, your Spoilers and your Signals need a bit of an introduction but for most of the A-listers its pay and play. It's the same reason Markus an McFeely left "with great power..." out of Spiderman's introduction. Your audience already know.

What stories need is to be accessible. Al Ewing is the current king of this. Geoff Johns for all his faults is pretty expert at it too. You can pick up something like Green Lantern Rebirth and know instantly what's going on. Dini is great at it. Scott Snyder used to have an eye to it, but after 10 years of Batman is so far up his own blackhole that his stuff is now completely unapproachable for anything but a hardcore fan.

[Bad Witch]

Just bought batman beyond the animated series with a download code. I'm in Canada so I don't know if that will impact it. First come first serve

7CBXFPKJF7N2WCK1

[scary harpy]

A hard reboot doesn't fix things, it just guarantees that the same stories get told for the nth time. If you rebooted Batman back to Year One, how long would it be before he's going to be fishing Joker out of the resevoir o having Bane crack his L2 over his knee? What value added does retracing these stories bring for a new reader, particularly the Batman stories, which are so well known and have been replicated so many times in more consumption friendly media?

I disagree.

It does not guarantee a retelling of older stories. That would be a choice made by the writer and editor.

Be to write them and tell them we want new stories not old.

If I want to see how Dick Grayson got his start as Robin I can see the DCAU version, the Young Justice version, the Titans version, the Batman and Robin version. Same with Knightfall, No Man's Land or Under the Red Hood. Don't want the original version, try the movie version, or the lego version. What entices a new reader to come and be told that story again?

Grayson would be Robin very briefly before graduating to Nightwing and the Titans. This does not need to be a rehash of an old story...it could be done better this time.

The big advantage the majority of the A list Batman characters have is that they have enough cache that they don't need to be reintroduced. Yes, your Spoilers and your Signals need a bit of an introduction but for most of the A-listers its pay and play. It's the same reason Markus an McFeely left "with great power..." out of Spiderman's introduction. Your audience already know.

I agree that we don't need reintroductions to the A-Listers. Yes, the audience already knows. I never suggested origins stories for everyone.

What stories need is to be accessible. Al Ewing is the current king of this. Geoff Johns for all his faults is pretty expert at it too. You can pick up something like Green Lantern Rebirth and know instantly what's going on. Dini is great at it. Scott Snyder used to have an eye to it, but after 10 years of Batman is so far up his own blackhole that his stuff is now completely unapproachable for anything but a hardcore fan.

DC has tried half-arsed reboots in the past...in fact, it's all they tried...and they Do Not Work.

They create a hot mess that others try to clean-up. It's tiresome to live through...I speak from experience.

[godisawesome]

I disagree.

It does not guarantee a retelling of older stories. That would be a choice made by the writer and editor.

Be to write them and tell them we want new stories not old.

Grayson would be Robin very briefly before graduating to Nightwing and the Titans. This does not need to be a rehash of an old story...it could be done better this time.

I agree that we don't need reintroductions to the A-Listers. Yes, the audience already knows. I never suggested origins stories for everyone.

DC has tried half-arsed reboots in the past...in fact, it's all they tried...and they Do Not Work.

They create a hot mess that others try to clean-up. It's tiresome to live through...I speak from experience.

The Post-Crisis reboot being surgical, soft and flexible wound up as a huge asset. That one Did Work.

And if you don’t want to reintroduce all the A-listers... than why do they need to be have their pasts thrown out in a reboot? If you don’t want to retell old stories... then why erase them? Why not leave those stories in a position where if a writer *wants* to use them as background can, but doesn’t have to? Why put pressure on a writer like he “has” to try and do a better job with a specific era of Batman before he can move on to one that he’s already interested in?

The “it could be done better this time” is a double edged sword - there are some stories and ideas you could easily update, and others that are a tall order, and need to be approached with a mix of ambition and quality, but not obligation.

I mean, they *did* completely reboot Tim Drake in the New 52.

And it sucked.

They did try to completely reboot Two-Face.

And it sucked.

They *did* try and reboot Cass and Steph completely, and with more time spent thinking it through and better creators than Scott Lobdell.

And it still wasn’t as good as their old introductions.

Just let writers do what they want, asking them to try and maintain some respect for previous work, and understand that if they have an idea for an update, it may work, or it may be ignored in favor of an old one.

And don’t tell readers they have to be patient and wait five or six years before they can see their favorite characters again if good writers and marketing can just make the books with them now more accessible.

[scary harpy]

The Post-Crisis reboot being surgical, soft and flexible wound up as a huge asset. That one Did Work.

Post-Crisis was the hottest, messiest Mess! That Did Not Work. (Other than being a cash cow for DC.)

And if you don’t want to reintroduce all the A-listers... than why do they need to be have their pasts thrown out in a reboot? If you don’t want to retell old stories... then why erase them? Why not leave those stories in a position where if a writer *wants* to use them as background can, but doesn’t have to? Why put pressure on a writer like he “has” to try and do a better job with a specific era of Batman before he can move on to one that he’s already interested in?

I'm leaving those old stories on another Earth. The only pressure on the writer is to tell new, good stories.

The “it could be done better this time” is a double edged sword - there are some stories and ideas you could easily update, and others that are a tall order, and need to be approached with a mix of ambition and quality, but not obligation.

I mean, they *did* completely reboot Tim Drake in the New 52.

And it sucked.

They did try to completely reboot Two-Face.

And it sucked.

They *did* try and reboot Cass and Steph completely, and with more time spent thinking it through and better creators than Scott Lobdell.

And it still wasn’t as good as their old introductions.

Yep; DC half-rebooted some of the Bat-family...and it didn't work. Quelle surprise.

And don’t tell readers they have to be patient and wait five or six years before they can see their favorite characters again if good writers and marketing can just make the books with them now more accessible.

Attention Readers: be patient.

DC's made the multi-verse a truly hot mess with half-arsed reboots.

Maybe the next half-arsed reboot will make everything better.