My wish for a Soft-Reboot

[Bored at 3:00AM]

I just want good stories. The exact details are less important to me than whether or not some story written years ago happened exactly the way it did in that particular issue. I would like the broad strokes of his long career to be acknowledged and all the wackiness of his many eras to be embraced, but that is all secondary to having a good set of creators on board with a clear creative vision that is supported by editorial.

[Restingvoice]

When was Tim 17 in Pre-Flashpoint?
I always considered him being 20 or so in the last stories in Pre-Flashpoint.

Kon being 20 makes actually PERFECT sense.

He was born as 16 year old guy and if you add his Solo-Series,YJ,TT and time between death and return than its LOGICAL if you see them being 20 years old.

How old was Tim as they started YJ? I thougth that Bart,Conner,Cassie and Tim were all 4 at (more or less) the same age.
You have only to think that there was 1 YEAR!! between Conners death during IC and his return.

Its LOGICAL for me and its the PERFECT SOLUTION:
Conner,Cassie,Bart and Tim can move on and get away from the teenage Superheroes and develop themselves
Jon,Damian,Wallace,Iris,Crush,Emiko...can stay together a TT....

Its LOGICAL and PERFECT SOLUTION for Tims Team and PERFECT SOLUTION for Damians Team.

He was mentioned to be an emancipated minor when he was made Wayne Enterprises CEO. Steph is one year older than him and she's in college when she's Batgirl. So taking all that she's 18 and he's 17.

Tim first started as Robin at 13 and attended middle school in his early Robin years. I don't remember exactly when he started attending high school, but it was after No Man's Land. After Death and Return of Superman, and Young Justice formation.

Now I remember. Kon dated a college student. Tanya? That would be too much if Kon was the same age as Tim and was in middle school. So he's older. Yeah, 16 sounds right.

There's not much age difference between Tim, Cass, and Kon. I don't remember exactly but their age in Young Justice maybe when Tim's 14, Cassie's 15 and Kon's 16.

Tim started as Robin at 13, then Knightfall, Death and Return Superman, and Reign of Superman happened, so Young Justice can form as early as the next year.

So yeah, Kon's 20 if Tim's 17. That checks out. Carry on.

[Kuwagaton]

Soft-Reboot its the only change DC has, because you can keep all the characters and keep the stories which are loved by the fans..

I don't mean starting from scratch. You can hard reboot and still keep Reign of the Supermen in his past. It works better that way, if you're stuck with a new version, instead of the way they're trying to keep it according to a continuity that doesn't allow it to be folded in as it actually played out.

I dont really get spear heading a reboot to mush around dates of events and possibly reassign who gets what book when inevitably it will get rearranged. American cape comics are just fanfiction basically. If the impetus for doing a reboot is to fix continuity you'll be stuck in a loop of continuity reboots. Batman and Spiderman aren't popular because they have sterling continuities but because the general ingredients that make them Spiderman and Batman are understood and agreed upon. Its why the characters can have a variety of interpretations that all are working from the same mulch. Superman meanwhile has undergone purges of his characteristics

Batman under writers like Snyder, Tomasi, and King lacks a tremendous wealth of accumulated characteristics from the forties to mid eighties. Spider-Man is decidedly not the character Ditko had in mind. In the end they conformed to popular opinion to great effect, it's not about maintaining what they've been so much as possessing what people like.

The one big, fatal objection I’d have a hard reboot is the hard relaunch aspect as well - the part where certain characters and ideas are boarded off and declared persona-non-grata until the books “reach” them... usually because you’re alienating fans int he already niche comic community, and you’re gambling that you’ll be able to match each character and concept’s best introduction to the mythos, and are just as likely to fail miserably at that as succeed.

I’d be up for a hard continuity reboot if they sat down and constructed a “series bible“ that would provide a backbone for books set at different points of the timeline. I really don’t want to be forced to hope that DC manages the perfect “murderer’s row” of creators on a long, slow retelling process, particularly with Superman, where I wouldn’t trust editorial to keep great artists locked down for long enough.

That's a good point. It worked for Supergirl in the eighties because she died before the reboot. But so many other characters kept pre crisis or pre flashpoint stuff with h the reboots to solve that problem.

A hard reboot is a pipe dream that would never work, it goes against the nature of what dc is. Even if they did it, it would only be a short matter of time before the new car smell wears off and writers-not just readers- writers! would absolutely want to use and build off of older stuff they like and start bringing what they want back. If you think otherwise, you’re lying to yourself.

Fifteen years after his debut, Superman was a different character even if there was no reboot. The last 34 years have had three reboots. For success or failure, ai do still think it's a legit part of the way DC goes.

The solution is called Hickman. Look at what he did with the X-Men. I don't know exactly what is the continuity there, but I don't care, Hickman made it so that the now is what really matters, this is what Superman needs.

Hickman managed to essentially reboot the X-Men in the middle of the Marvel continuity that refuses to maintain a reboot. I do think that should indicate what's possible here.

Hickman though... he loves his big casts because of his plot structures. I love what he's doing for X-Men but I'm not convinced of him writing the actual Superman yet.

[OpaqueGiraffe17]

I mean a hard reboot for dc in general, like everything gets rebooted and doesn’t pick and choose any stories from from previous continuities. Flashpoint, Crisis, we’re going to get more of those from time to time, absolutely. But those aren’t considered full reboots. For some characters/corners of dc, sure some stuff started from scratch. But writers always circle back and eventually weave in stuff from the past they want.
Sorry if I came off harsh, but I’m kinda sick of the myth of the fabled hard reboot that would fix everything. It wouldn’t. Dc history is a mess, and I can’t see that ever really changing, and that’s ok.

[Korath]

Yeah, I'm done with the idea of soft reboots because they never fail to stop some obvious details from goofing them up. It's like spraying sanitizer on dirt.

I'm all for something new and well planned at a given moment. I'd also like a 1970-1986 version, or a 1986-2003 version, because they're really easy to re establish if you're not working to integrate them into other takes. And seriously, I don't think it's counterintuitive to do that while keeping other DC titles as they are.

The problem with a hard reboot is that it serves no purpose if it's just to repeat older story beats. That's kind of the same thing with movies : older ones don't always need a reboot because they can sustain themselves if anyone wants to see them. And often rebooting them end badly.

In the case of Superman, what would be the point of a reboot where we just get to read again, beat by beat, what already happened ? We'll know he'll fell in love with Lois, marry her and have a son. We'll know he'll die at some point at the hands of Doomsday, that Lex will be an evil prick and all that stuff.

A hard reboot's sole purpose must be to take unexpected turns, to change stuff in significant ways. Something we all know won't work for most comics fans.

[Jon Clark]

The problem with a hard reboot is that it serves no purpose if it's just to repeat older story beats. That's kind of the same thing with movies : older ones don't always need a reboot because they can sustain themselves if anyone wants to see them. And often rebooting them end badly.

In the case of Superman, what would be the point of a reboot where we just get to read again, beat by beat, what already happened ? We'll know he'll fell in love with Lois, marry her and have a son. We'll know he'll die at some point at the hands of Doomsday, that Lex will be an evil prick and all that stuff.

A hard reboot's sole purpose must be to take unexpected turns, to change stuff in significant ways. Something we all know won't work for most comics fans.

The purpose of a hard reboot should be to erase all the prior stories, especially the vague and inconsistent ones.

It's Day One and all comics fans get an equal helping of being pissed off. Superman isn't defined by 1938 comics, 1956 comics, 1972 comics, 1986 comics, 2003 comics ... he's defined by the comics that are published today.

He's about to meet a Lex Luthor who isn't bound by any past story- no "you made me bald" in Smallville, no President Luthor, no Apex Lex. He may be a corporate manipulator. He may be part of a government think-tank tasked with studying this new "Superman". He might be a bored millionaire who has become bored and jaded until he realizes Superman is the challenge he needs. The writers will get to flesh all that out .

We meet a Lois who may or may not be the endgame. All we see is that Clark and Lois are attracted to each other now. The writers have future stories to decide just where this relationship goes. They will tell us when (or even if) Lois learns the truth of the secret identity.

We get a 21st century Daily Planet that isn't tied to being a 1940's newspaper or a 1970's media subsidiary of a TV station. The place gets a cast based on what the this Planet needs and if they reintroduce someone like Steve Lombard or Cat Grant it is because they serve the story not just to check off a box or to incite nostalgia. And once introduced they grow from there. We don't get a young Cat Grant introduced suddenly morphing overnight into Calista Flockhart's character . We get one or the other and future writers build from there.

Basically we get a new Action Comics #1 that like the 1938 version isn't beholden to what came before or locked into what someone wants it to look like in 2120. No 10 year old offspring that we never saw before. No long running friendship/rivalry with Batman. No other Kryptonians until they are introduced.

[Sacred Knight]

I don't think a hard reboot would automatically fix everything because the eyes and hands that would be crafting the new myth would largely be the same eyes and hands crafting the old one. You clean your slate, you wipe out the unfixable confusion, but its dependent on learning from mistakes and being committed to building things up again slowly. In that scenario I still believe it would be of great benefit, personally. But you'd have to be willing to let go of certain concepts for a good long while in some cases. For instance, Dick Grayson can show up fairly early, but the other Robins? They'd have to stay gone a long time. That's a give and take. An admittedly tough give, but to me it'd be part of the commitment.

Focusing on what is though, I just can't board that the nonsensical history is okay when its to such a degree that basically said history doesn't matter anymore. I just constantly ask myself what is the point of a long continuity if you can barely reference it because it doesn't make sense anymore, no one knows where its placed, or even the writer isn't sure if it fits anymore. Pre-Crisis had a lot of mismatched history but they never pretended back then that it was that much of import to make it fit. It wasn't a big deal to readers, and it wasn't a big deal to the creators. They just moved forward and focused on present day stories. Now its different, now it means so much that when it doesn't make sense, they have to fix it. And it never makes sense so they're always trying to fix it. Only five years after New 52 we got Rebirth. Four years after Rebirth we're now getting Death Metal. And if you're constantly and consistently focusing on trying to fix the old stuff, you're not letting the past supplement the present and future. You're letting the past dominate at the expense of the present and future. Which makes the continuity as pointless as basically not having one at all anyway. I mean if they actually wanted to forgo the idea of strict continuity in the first place, stop worrying about it, then maybe this problem stops. But that doesn't seem like anything which is even a remote possibility either.

[Vordan]

Only ones I trust to do a hard reboot of Superman at this point are Hickman or Ewing. We’ve already seen what Waid, Johns, and Morrison would do. Kind curious what Busiek would do but I don’t think he has any interest in taking on that task. But once you reboot you have to ban all the previous Superman writers from the title. No Jurgens, Tomasi, Bendis, Johns, etc, new voices only. Reason for that is we’ve seen what happens when those guys get the book, they try to bring their old stuff back. New blood will want to bring old stuff back too, but they might at least try to revamp the concepts like how Pak tried with Doomsday.

Really though, I’d rather just get a new Ultimate Superman. Let the main guy be what he is and let’s try another Morrison/Golden Age take in another continuity. Those that want Superdad with his happy nuclear family get that, and those who want a young Superman who is less of a Boy Scout and isn’t married to Lois get that.

[SiegePerilous02]

I don't think a hard reboot would automatically fix everything because the eyes and hands that would be crafting the new myth would largely be the same eyes and hands crafting the old one. You clean your slate, you wipe out the unfixable confusion, but its dependent on learning from mistakes and being committed to building things up again slowly. In that scenario I still believe it would be of great benefit, personally. But you'd have to be willing to let go of certain concepts for a good long while in some cases. For instance, Dick Grayson can show up fairly early, but the other Robins? They'd have to stay gone a long time. That's a give and take. An admittedly tough give, but to me it'd be part of the commitment.

Focusing on what is though, I just can't board that the nonsensical history is okay when its to such a degree that basically said history doesn't matter anymore. I just constantly ask myself what is the point of a long continuity if you can barely reference it because it doesn't make sense anymore, no one knows where its placed, or even the writer isn't sure if it fits anymore. Pre-Crisis had a lot of mismatched history but they never pretended back then that it was that much of import to make it fit. It wasn't a big deal to readers, and it wasn't a big deal to the creators. They just moved forward and focused on present day stories. Now its different, now it means so much that when it doesn't make sense, they have to fix it. And it never makes sense so they're always trying to fix it. Only five years after New 52 we got Rebirth. Four years after Rebirth we're now getting Death Metal. And if you're constantly and consistently focusing on trying to fix the old stuff, you're not letting the past supplement the present and future. You're letting the past dominate at the expense of the present and future. Which makes the continuity as pointless as basically not having one at all anyway. I mean if they actually wanted to forgo the idea of strict continuity in the first place, stop worrying about it, then maybe this problem stops. But that doesn't seem like anything which is even a remote possibility either.

I generally agree with you. I'd personally be willing to let go of a lot of stuff for a while (if not permanently- the older published material is still there), but I know a lot of people would not. The comic book fans, at least the niche that makes up the Wednesday Warriors, cares too much for continuity, legacy and character development to let things go. I think hard reboot with a plan would work wonders for Superman and Batman (who are more static/larger than life archetypes who do not depend on any specific continuity of events to work beyond their broad trappings), since they have so much baggage. But a lot of people would have a fit if you tossed the Bat-Family, even though it would be necessary for a fresh start for Bruce. Others would similarly hate the idea of losing Jon and the Super marriage. And it doesn't help that a lot of the characters that would by necessity get tossed out for this are the ones who provide diversity. Steel and Renee Montoya could stick around with no issues, but you run into trouble with the absence of the legacies.

Some characters are reliant on the arcs they go through in certain era to have worth as characters. This is one of the reasons Wally West has taken such a massive hit and why nobody knows what to do with the Bat-Family anymore. Dick Grayson might take a big hit if he was made Robin again. But at the same time, with how confusing things are and the little use all the legacy/continuity is getting anyway, would it be really that much of a loss at this point? The likelihood of any old continuity coming back as it was or a coherent continuity without a reboot happening is very slim.

Only ones I trust to do a hard reboot of Superman at this point are Hickman or Ewing. We’ve already seen what Waid, Johns, and Morrison would do. Kind curious what Busiek would do but I don’t think he has any interest in taking on that task. But once you reboot you have to ban all the previous Superman writers from the title. No Jurgens, Tomasi, Bendis, Johns, etc, new voices only. Reason for that is we’ve seen what happens when those guys get the book, they try to bring their old stuff back. New blood will want to bring old stuff back too, but they might at least try to revamp the concepts like how Pak tried with Doomsday.

Really though, I’d rather just get a new Ultimate Superman. Let the main guy be what he is and let’s try another Morrison/Golden Age take in another continuity. Those that want Superdad with his happy nuclear family get that, and those who want a young Superman who is less of a Boy Scout and isn’t married to Lois get that.

But supposedly the Superman comic not tied to the main universe would be seen as "lesser" and wither and die because it wouldn't seen as mattering that much. This is also why the JSA can't be on another Earth.

This isn't a mentality I really buy mind you and I would personally love to see an Ultimate Superman (especially by Hickman, Ewing or if we could get Morrison back), but that would be an argument against it.

[Vordan]

I think the popularity of alternate continuity stuff like Bombshells, Injustice, or DCeased shows that people aren’t really that tied up on the main universe being greater over the others. People tend to just treat the characters as one version in different tales, which is why they get mad or confused when stories contradict one another. They also tend to point to alternate takes in arguments over the main versions which is a source of both frustration and amusement for me.

If a Hickman or Ewing or some other big name got announced as writing an Ultimate Superman title, paired with an artist like Jorge Jimenez? That would absolutely move copies.

[OpaqueGiraffe17]

I think the popularity of alternate continuity stuff like Bombshells, Injustice, or DCeased shows that people aren’t really that tied up on the main universe being greater over the others. People tend to just treat the characters as one version in different tales, which is why they get mad or confused when stories contradict one another. They also tend to point to alternate takes in arguments over the main versions which is a source of both frustration and amusement for me.

If a Hickman or Ewing or some other big name got announced as writing an Ultimate Superman title, paired with an artist like Jorge Jimenez? That would absolutely move copies.

Most of those had a “hook” to them, dcceased was an a zombie apocalypse, Injustice was most of the good guys are evil, Bombshells was steampunk or something.
And imo, both fans and the powers that be overestimate big time how much of a hook of “this time the hero is 25 and single!” That goes both ways for experienced with a family, of course. Those are details, only hardcore fans care about.

With Ultimate Spider-Man there is a big difference between a 30 year old adult Peter and a 15 year old high school Peter. But a 25 year old Clark vs a 35 or even 40 year old Clark? Meh, not nearly as dramatic a difference as people make it out to be. Now if you wanted to do an updated Smallvillesque comic set in Clark’s teenage years, there may be more of a hook there.

[godisawesome]

One of the other catches to a hard reboot is that I think most of us would agree that cartoons and movies have shown you can begin a new continuity “in media res” or even “pretty far into it” if you want to, and that commitment to a particular status quo start and quality writing is all you need if you want to, say, start with Superman married, multiple Robins, etc.

That’s one of the reasons why I support a softer approach to continuity more akin to the Post-Crisis Batman set-up, where changes can and are introduced in flashback books - but can be ignored or redefined by other writers, provided the overall team of writers on the family books are down with it... and provided you’ve got good enough creators to make it worthwhile.

The really bane of any reboot is a) being unnecessary, and b) being of lower quality than what came before. Grant Morrison’s New 52 origin for Superman was better than Geoff Johns’s late Pre-Flashpoint attempt, and one could argue that part of the problem with Johns’s reboot was that it wasn’t really necessary, so it really comes down to kind of a luck of the draw in terms of a creator with both the right skill level, a genuinely passionate and successful update or change they want to introduce, and a status quo that actually would beef it from change.

Part of the reason Batman fans are more consistent in being less interested in the New 52 was that there wasn’t really any need to hard reboot any of that stuff, and most of the significant reboot element was just kind of bland or bad for that franchise. Superman was arguably in enough limbo to benefit from a reboot before Flashpoint, but you can really see how the same editorial board that let the brand sink pre-Flashpoint couldn’t help the leaves and soon replicated the same mistakes post-Flashpoint.

[Kuwagaton]

The problem with a hard reboot is that it serves no purpose if it's just to repeat older story beats. That's kind of the same thing with movies : older ones don't always need a reboot because they can sustain themselves if anyone wants to see them. And often rebooting them end badly.

In the case of Superman, what would be the point of a reboot where we just get to read again, beat by beat, what already happened ? We'll know he'll fell in love with Lois, marry her and have a son. We'll know he'll die at some point at the hands of Doomsday, that Lex will be an evil prick and all that stuff.

What I'm saying isn't "beat by beat" though. I'm saying that there are things like the rocket in front of the exploding planet that will specifically surface repeatedly, yeah, but also parts of his life open to be reinterpreted. He's met Lois in a number of different ways for example. His first clash with Luthor tends to be even more different even if it's basically the same idea.

Right now we're told that Death and Return happened, but many of the details we're given depend on contradictory beats of continuities smudged together. How do we have the eradicator without the birthing matrix, for example?

With a hard reboot you can just re-do that story so that it isn't a mess of ideas, and you certainly don't need to spend 40 issues or even six to review it.

A hard reboot's sole purpose must be to take unexpected turns, to change stuff in significant ways. Something we all know won't work for most comics fans.

Marvel's Ultimate line ran concurrently with the regular line, reinterpreting many classics to great success. Like I'm sure anyone could guess where captain Stacy would end up, but establishing old beats in and of itself wasn't really a problem.

Only ones I trust to do a hard reboot of Superman at this point are Hickman or Ewing. We’ve already seen what Waid, Johns, and Morrison would do. Kind curious what Busiek would do but I don’t think he has any interest in taking on that task. But once you reboot you have to ban all the previous Superman writers from the title. No Jurgens, Tomasi, Bendis, Johns, etc, new voices only.

Honestly I'd like to see a DC where they burn less bridges and practice less age discrimination.

[scary harpy]

Some good ideas about a hard reboot.

The problem with a hard reboot is that it serves no purpose if it's just to repeat older story beats. That's kind of the same thing with movies : older ones don't always need a reboot because they can sustain themselves if anyone wants to see them. And often rebooting them end badly.

In the case of Superman, what would be the point of a reboot where we just get to read again, beat by beat, what already happened ? We'll know he'll fell in love with Lois, marry her and have a son. We'll know he'll die at some point at the hands of Doomsday, that Lex will be an evil prick and all that stuff.

A hard reboot's sole purpose must be to take unexpected turns, to change stuff in significant ways. Something we all know won't work for most comics fans.

Sounds good to me.

The purpose of a hard reboot should be to erase all the prior stories, especially the vague and inconsistent ones.

It's Day One and all comics fans get an equal helping of being pissed off. Superman isn't defined by 1938 comics, 1956 comics, 1972 comics, 1986 comics, 2003 comics ... he's defined by the comics that are published today.

He's about to meet a Lex Luthor who isn't bound by any past story- no "you made me bald" in Smallville, no President Luthor, no Apex Lex. He may be a corporate manipulator. He may be part of a government think-tank tasked with studying this new "Superman". He might be a bored millionaire who has become bored and jaded until he realizes Superman is the challenge he needs. The writers will get to flesh all that out .

We meet a Lois who may or may not be the endgame. All we see is that Clark and Lois are attracted to each other now. The writers have future stories to decide just where this relationship goes. They will tell us when (or even if) Lois learns the truth of the secret identity.

We get a 21st century Daily Planet that isn't tied to being a 1940's newspaper or a 1970's media subsidiary of a TV station. The place gets a cast based on what the this Planet needs and if they reintroduce someone like Steve Lombard or Cat Grant it is because they serve the story not just to check off a box or to incite nostalgia. And once introduced they grow from there. We don't get a young Cat Grant introduced suddenly morphing overnight into Calista Flockhart's character . We get one or the other and future writers build from there.

Basically we get a new Action Comics #1 that like the 1938 version isn't beholden to what came before or locked into what someone wants it to look like in 2120. No 10 year old offspring that we never saw before. No long running friendship/rivalry with Batman. No other Kryptonians until they are introduced.

Sounds great to me.

I don't think a hard reboot would automatically fix everything because the eyes and hands that would be crafting the new myth would largely be the same eyes and hands crafting the old one. You clean your slate, you wipe out the unfixable confusion, but its dependent on learning from mistakes and being committed to building things up again slowly. In that scenario I still believe it would be of great benefit, personally. But you'd have to be willing to let go of certain concepts for a good long while in some cases. For instance, Dick Grayson can show up fairly early, but the other Robins? They'd have to stay gone a long time. That's a give and take. An admittedly tough give, but to me it'd be part of the commitment.

Focusing on what is though, I just can't board that the nonsensical history is okay when its to such a degree that basically said history doesn't matter anymore. I just constantly ask myself what is the point of a long continuity if you can barely reference it because it doesn't make sense anymore, no one knows where its placed, or even the writer isn't sure if it fits anymore. Pre-Crisis had a lot of mismatched history but they never pretended back then that it was that much of import to make it fit. It wasn't a big deal to readers, and it wasn't a big deal to the creators. They just moved forward and focused on present day stories. Now its different, now it means so much that when it doesn't make sense, they have to fix it. And it never makes sense so they're always trying to fix it. Only five years after New 52 we got Rebirth. Four years after Rebirth we're now getting Death Metal. And if you're constantly and consistently focusing on trying to fix the old stuff, you're not letting the past supplement the present and future. You're letting the past dominate at the expense of the present and future. Which makes the continuity as pointless as basically not having one at all anyway. I mean if they actually wanted to forgo the idea of strict continuity in the first place, stop worrying about it, then maybe this problem stops. But that doesn't seem like anything which is even a remote possibility either.

I generally agree with you. I'd personally be willing to let go of a lot of stuff for a while (if not permanently- the older published material is still there), but I know a lot of people would not. The comic book fans, at least the niche that makes up the Wednesday Warriors, cares too much for continuity, legacy and character development to let things go. I think hard reboot with a plan would work wonders for Superman and Batman (who are more static/larger than life archetypes who do not depend on any specific continuity of events to work beyond their broad trappings), since they have so much baggage. But a lot of people would have a fit if you tossed the Bat-Family, even though it would be necessary for a fresh start for Bruce. Others would similarly hate the idea of losing Jon and the Super marriage. And it doesn't help that a lot of the characters that would by necessity get tossed out for this are the ones who provide diversity. Steel and Renee Montoya could stick around with no issues, but you run into trouble with the absence of the legacies.

Some characters are reliant on the arcs they go through in certain era to have worth as characters. This is one of the reasons Wally West has taken such a massive hit and why nobody knows what to do with the Bat-Family anymore. Dick Grayson might take a big hit if he was made Robin again. But at the same time, with how confusing things are and the little use all the legacy/continuity is getting anyway, would it be really that much of a loss at this point? The likelihood of any old continuity coming back as it was or a coherent continuity without a reboot happening is very slim.

Yes, Sacred Knight, DCU's history has become a burden.

SiegePerilous02, let the Wednesday Warriors whine away! Complaining is what comics fans do best.

I love the characters we would lose...but I know we need to lose them for a time.

DC's TPTB don't have a clue what to do with all it's characters.

How many thousands of characters does DC own? How many are sitting on a shelf in limbo? And what's DC's answer to this? Make new characters!

It's simply past time DC did a hard erase/reboot. It's the only thing they have not tried to clean up their mess.

[Vordan]

Most of those had a “hook” to them, dcceased was an a zombie apocalypse, Injustice was most of the good guys are evil, Bombshells was steampunk or something.
And imo, both fans and the powers that be overestimate big time how much of a hook of “this time the hero is 25 and single!” That goes both ways for experienced with a family, of course. Those are details, only hardcore fans care about.

With Ultimate Spider-Man there is a big difference between a 30 year old adult Peter and a 15 year old high school Peter. But a 25 year old Clark vs a 35 or even 40 year old Clark? Meh, not nearly as dramatic a difference as people make it out to be. Now if you wanted to do an updated Smallvillesque comic set in Clark’s teenage years, there may be more of a hook there.

Obviously there would need to be more changes to differentiate Earth 0 and Earth Ultimate. I mean just to throw some ideas out there if I was writing the book I’d start off with:
1. Ma and Pa are dead on Earth Ultimate as opposed to Earth 0
2. Clark is working at the Daily Star instead of the Daily Planet, with the Star being a younger competitor to the Planet, more internet savvy and more of a blog than a respected news source
3. Clark and Lana (who is an engineer working at Lexcorp) are living together in Metropolis with Lois being Clark’s biggest reporter rival
4. Clark is wearing a modified version of the t-shirt and jeans look, he’s only at Golden Age power levels, and he’s way more aggressive and hands on like he was at the start of the New 52
5. Metropolis is more cyberpunk than the Earth 0 Art Deco look, it’s divided up between mega corps of which Lexcorp is just one competitor among many
6. Jimmy is Clark’s age and is working as a photojournalist for the Star with Clark
7. Mongul abducting Superman and a bunch of Metropolis citizens to fight in Warworld is how Clark learns his Kryptonian nature, and his victory at Warworld is how he gets the Fortress of Solitude
8. Brainiac is the merger of the DCAU Kryptonian AI and the Coluan Vril Dox
9. Doomsday isn’t Kryptonian, he’s instead a bioweapon that grew out of control like the Xenomorph from Alien
10. Corbyn and Lois are dating at the start, Corbyn is an ex-Navy Seal who works for a mercenary Blackwater-esque company that hides itself out to the megacorps. He passes on info about the corps to Lois, and his transformation into Metallo is an unwilling process that is forced on him after a suspicious accident that comes after he tells Lois several high level secrets that make their way to the public
And so on and on. There’s room to differentiate the Earth 0 and Earth Ultimate guy from one another. I don’t know if the audience will be there for that but I think people would give it a shot.

What I'm saying isn't "beat by beat" though. I'm saying that there are things like the rocket in front of the exploding planet that will specifically surface repeatedly, yeah, but also parts of his life open to be reinterpreted. He's met Lois in a number of different ways for example. His first clash with Luthor tends to be even more different even if it's basically the same idea.

Right now we're told that Death and Return happened, but many of the details we're given depend on contradictory beats of continuities smudged together. How do we have the eradicator without the birthing matrix, for example?

With a hard reboot you can just re-do that story so that it isn't a mess of ideas, and you certainly don't need to spend 40 issues or even six to review it.



Marvel's Ultimate line ran concurrently with the regular line, reinterpreting many classics to great success. Like I'm sure anyone could guess where captain Stacy would end up, but establishing old beats in and of itself wasn't really a problem.



Honestly I'd like to see a DC where they burn less bridges and practice less age discrimination.

Eh I don’t really see it as burning bridges, and it’s not really a matter of discriminating because of age. This would be a new take separate from the Earth 0 guy who would still exist. The point in not letting the old guard on him is that so much of the last few years of Supes have been the same handful of creators. An “Ultimate Superman” should be given to the young and upcoming creators to play with, like how Bendis made his name on USM. We shouldn’t be rehashing the same old ideas and stories over and over again.