The Status Quo in comics. Whose fault is it really?

[babyblob]

So we all know that when writers do something different with a character that 9 times out of ten it will not last. Things will go back to the way there were because a new writer ignores or recons the new stuff. We all yell about it, we dont like it. but whose fault is it really? Is it the companies who allow writers to do this time and time again? Is it the writers who are scared to make changes? Or is it our fault for buying the comics despite being upset with everything going back to the way it was before?

Or maybe not so much the status quo but really bad writing or art? Or how we get mad at 20 variant covers yet they all sell out.

I do have a legit question. Has anyone ever dropped a comic because of the writers going back to the status Quo? Or maybe not so much the status quo but just ignoring a story line from another writer? Ill be honest I have not really ever dropped a comic before. Maybe Strike Force but it happened around the time of covid so who noticed.

[CSTowle]

There are many reasons, but on status quo I'd say occasional straying from it is necessary. If you're going to read Superman for 5/10/20 years you're probably not going to want to re-read the same Kryptonite/Mxyzptlk/Luthor's mad genius stories over and over. You're going to need a Blue energy Superman, a Death of..or two, someone (or several someones) standing in for him, radical (but temporary) shifts in tone/setting/etc. All of it (hopefully) fun and interesting enough as a break from the norm, but also making the audience yearn for a return to that status quo you're talking about.

Imagine if your favorite TV shows went on for as long as these heroes have (some going on 80 years), only the "directors" and "actors" (writers/artists) change every few years or months, each wanting to give their take on the characters and concepts, many wanting to tell their version of classic stories, but also trying to keep it fresh enough to keep going on all these decades. Some will work, others we'll try to collectively forget, but I'd say both having a basic status quo and occasionally straying from it are necessary to keep people interested. As to variants, I may not seek them out but there's obviously a market for them so to each their own. I tend to drop comics based on writer changes more often than any other reason, but not for changing from the previous storyline (I'd expect that).

[frankiedetroit]

So we all know that when writers do something different with a character that 9 times out of ten it will not last. Things will go back to the way there were because a new writer ignores or recons the new stuff. We all yell about it, we dont like it. but whose fault is it really? Is it the companies who allow writers to do this time and time again? Is it the writers who are scared to make changes? Or is it our fault for buying the comics despite being upset with everything going back to the way it was before?

Or maybe not so much the status quo but really bad writing or art? Or how we get mad at 20 variant covers yet they all sell out.

I do have a legit question. Has anyone ever dropped a comic because of the writers going back to the status Quo? Or maybe not so much the status quo but just ignoring a story line from another writer? Ill be honest I have not really ever dropped a comic before. Maybe Strike Force but it happened around the time of covid so who noticed.

I stopped reading Flash when Barry Allen returned. I adored Barry when I was a kid and mourned his death. His return, even though it was 20+ years later, pissed me off because it pushed out Wally, who I'd really grown to love in that role.

[LordMikel]

In my opinion, the fault lies with the new fans.

Many years ago, we had Electric Superman and I worked at a comic store. A regular customer came in and said, "when are they going to change Superman back?"
I looked at him blankly and asked, "you don't buy Superman, why do you care?"
His response, "Well I want to start buying him."
I said, "no problem, I've got some great back issues, that you will love."
"No, I want new issues of Superman, but his classic look, not this electric one."

So I couldn't win, he wanted the Superman he remembered and nothing else would do.


To answer your other question. I have dropped Hulk in the past when the writer simply made him big and dumb. I felt Hulk was beyond that persona.

[Kuro no Shinigami]

Changes in status quo rarely remained permanent.

As others said, Superman went through many changes like his death and resurrection, electric blue look, and marriage to Lois. Did it keep old fans happy or did it get new fans? The sales decided those changes in status quo.

[MyriVerse]

I stopped reading Flash when Barry Allen returned. I adored Barry when I was a kid and mourned his death. His return, even though it was 20+ years later, pissed me off because it pushed out Wally, who I'd really grown to love in that role.

Never could stand Wally, so I was tickled Barry was back! Disliked his death (hate most deaths). Missed him constantly.

Fault schmault. Status quo tends to be good and iconic. "New" tends to be a fad.

[Mister Mets]

This can be difficult.

One problem is that people can have different opinions about the appeal of a series. Is Superman the last Kryptonian, or should there be others? Is the interesting Spider-Man that he is young or that he has grown? Should Batman fight a lonely battle against crime, or lead a vigilante army? Should the Flash be Barry Allen or Wally West?

If the status quo is too consistent, the book is boring. If the status quo changes in a bad way, the book sucks. If the status quo changes too much, the book is no longer about what made it popular in the first place.

[Jim Kelly]

Most new characters go through a period of rapid change and development. Once they acquire a large enough market to sustain them, they settle into a status quo that satisfies that audience. This can go on for decades.

If the market changes and those characters lose their audience, they go though another period of change and development (maybe not as rapid as the first) until they reach a sustainable carrying capacity and they level off at another status quo. Any changes that the market approves are kept and those they disapprove are axed.

Long established characters like Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Iron Man haven't had just one status quo--they've had several. It's kind of ridiculous for any character to last so long--and these characters have only managed to stick around because they've been completely re-invented, to make them new again. Sure, Electric Superman didn't stick--nobody thought it would--but Superman being married to Lois Lane has stuck (even after the New 52 tried to retcon it away). There was a time, for many decades, where Batman was an agent of the police and not a wanted man--now he's a vigilante working outside the law. Spidey was married to M.J. for twenty years before that marriage was retconned away. In the 1970s, Tony Stark suddenly became an alcoholic, despite that never being in his character before.

Status quos are like buses--wait long enough and another one is bound to come along. But not the Status Quo--there will only ever be one Quo.

[LordMikel]

Most new characters go through a period of rapid change and development. Once they acquire a large enough market to sustain them, they settle into a status quo that satisfies that audience. This can go on for decades.

If the market changes and those characters lose their audience, they go though another period of change and development (maybe not as rapid as the first) until they reach a sustainable carrying capacity and they level off at another status quo. Any changes that the market approves are kept and those they disapprove are axed.

Long established characters like Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Iron Man haven't had just one status quo--they've had several. It's kind of ridiculous for any character to last so long--and these characters have only managed to stick around because they've been completely re-invented, to make them new again. Sure, Electric Superman didn't stick--nobody thought it would--but Superman being married to Lois Lane has stuck (even after the New 52 tried to retcon it away). There was a time, for many decades, where Batman was an agent of the police and not a wanted man--now he's a vigilante working outside the law. Spidey was married to M.J. for twenty years before that marriage was retconned away. In the 1970s, Tony Stark suddenly became an alcoholic, despite that never being in his character before.

Status quos are like buses--wait long enough and another one is bound to come along. But not the Status Quo--there will only ever be one Quo.

I agree with this, and I think that was my problem with Marvel marketing the past few years. SpOck is permanent. Thor is now always Jane Foster. Captain America is a Hydra agent. All three were advertised as "this is permanent and how it will be from now on." It made me lose interest in all three of those stories.

On the flipside, Supergirl was given a Red Ring. I knew it wouldn't last, and I was fine with reading that stint. It worked for me and DC never said, "Supergirl is now always going to be a Red Lantern."

[Username taken]

So we all know that when writers do something different with a character that 9 times out of ten it will not last. Things will go back to the way there were because a new writer ignores or recons the new stuff. We all yell about it, we dont like it. but whose fault is it really? Is it the companies who allow writers to do this time and time again? Is it the writers who are scared to make changes? Or is it our fault for buying the comics despite being upset with everything going back to the way it was before?

Or maybe not so much the status quo but really bad writing or art? Or how we get mad at 20 variant covers yet they all sell out.

I do have a legit question. Has anyone ever dropped a comic because of the writers going back to the status Quo? Or maybe not so much the status quo but just ignoring a story line from another writer? Ill be honest I have not really ever dropped a comic before. Maybe Strike Force but it happened around the time of covid so who noticed.

Sometimes it’s editorial mandate like with Spider-man and The Flash.

I didn’t drop Spider-man but I stopped reading Flash although I gave Barry Allen’s book a try. It was just too darn dull.

As much as I criticize creators, fans constitute a big part of the problem here. There’s a very vocal contingent of fans that are far too hooked on nostalgia. They have this idea that everything must be the way it was before even when ostensibly good progress has been made. It’s become much more pronounced with the aging of the fanbase and the infantilaztion of pop culture. It becomes even more of a problem when these fans find themselves in creative positions (see Dan Didio or Joe Quesada).

IMO this is why superhero comics have hit a hard holding pattern for the last 30 years or so. Superman, Batman etc major changes occurred decades ago but in the modern era, things have just stood still and all form of change are pretty much rejected. In today’s environment, it would be pretty much impossible to move from Alan Scott to Hal Jordan or Jay Garrick to Barry Allen because someone somewhere would decide to inevitably bring back the “originals”, character progression or plot be damned.

[Adam Allen]

Ya, no one is to blame for the status quo of comics, the fact the popular and lasting characters exist in this state of flux where they reflect the styles and concerns of the modern day (be that 70s, 80s, 90s, whatever) and move through plot-lines that change over an issue or over arcs that last years, but inevitably return to a comfortably familiar starting point for any new stories ... that is actually what distinguishes comic books as a medium. Books, movies, tv shows ... you know, you might have a new Sherlock Holmes in any of those, and I suppose in that way he's probably the non-comics character closest to our spandex wearing heroes, but the difference between him and say Superman still is illustrative. You could be the biggest Sherlock Holmes fan, and have read every book, seen every movie and watched every show, but you still will not have been reading one (or multiple) continuously published, never-ending narratives of Holmes for the last 80 or however many years, as you would need to have done to be the comparative fan for Superman in comics.

I mean, not only will your popular characters like Superman, Batman, Spider-Man or Wolverine potentially have 3-4 solo comic books running parallel narratives at one time, but the characters will also show up in team books and have cameos in other random shared-universe books ... and will of course also be affected by those company-wide crossovers like Crisis of Whatever or Secret Invasion/Wars/Whatever ... through soft and hard reboots ever, while Peter Parker being killed off and being replaced with Otto Octavius in Peter's body is bad, likewise it had to suck to read alternate Peter dying in the Ultimate Universe, only to be replaced by Miles ... then have that Peter come back I guess? But, then somehow not stick around to be a problem when the Ultimate line of books ended, and Miles and a few other randoms were folded into the 616?

Okay, went on a bit of a tangent there, but the point is that if you take the every part of all the published stories of any of our favorite comics characters and try to lay it all out as one continuous story, it would be an endlessly contradictory and inconsistent mess, because unless a novel or series of novels or tv series or any other medium ... well, comics stories exist in a medium where the status quo is the constant, where it really doesn't matter if literally the entire universe ends ... because it's happened before, and things will go back to normal again after a short period, and as frustrating as that can be if we want to feel like the stories matter ... I guess it's also something we should love about the medium, because that ever unchanging status quo is also why multiple generations of kids were all able to grow up admiring Clark Kent and Peter Parker.

[frankiedetroit]

Sometimes it’s editorial mandate like with Spider-man and The Flash.

I didn’t drop Spider-man but I stopped reading Flash although I gave Barry Allen’s book a try. It was just too darn dull.

As much as I criticize creators, fans constitute a big part of the problem here. There’s a very vocal contingent of fans that are far too hooked on nostalgia. They have this idea that everything must be the way it was before even when ostensibly good progress has been made. It’s become much more pronounced with the aging of the fanbase and the infantilaztion of pop culture. It becomes even more of a problem when these fans find themselves in creative positions (see Dan Didio or Joe Quesada).

IMO this is why superhero comics have hit a hard holding pattern for the last 30 years or so. Superman, Batman etc major changes occurred decades ago but in the modern era, things have just stood still and all form of change are pretty much rejected. In today’s environment, it would be pretty much impossible to move from Alan Scott to Hal Jordan or Jay Garrick to Barry Allen because someone somewhere would decide to inevitably bring back the “originals”, character progression or plot be damned.

I've often thought the introduction of Barry Allen would've been the second comics moment to break the Internet, had it occurred today. Fans would never have accepted that Jay Garrick was a comic book character in Barry's world, and how dare DC think they could replace him.

(First Internet-breaking moment: How could DC introduce a brightly covered kid as Batman's sidekick. I HATE HIM AND DC AND ANYONE WHO LIKES HIM IS AN IDIOT. DC HAS RUINED THIS BOOK AND I WILL NEVER READ IT AGAIN!!!!)