Originally Posted by
80sForever
With Marvel, "updating" origins has always been offensive to me. I hate feeling revised without an explanation, see Spider-Man Chapter One.
1960s Marvel characters were "pop art". Luke Cage is pure 1970s. Taking them out and putting their origins in a world raised by social media is...ugghhh.
Is making good new characters that hard?
I like the Life Story concept, and realized that was the way to go years ago when I first read Generations, Supreme, and Earth-X. I found Astro City's Crisis explanation to make much more sense and it wasn't insulting that even AC had reboots.
IMHO Marvel wants it both ways- a rich history dating back to the 1960s (or 1930s- also a retcon) yet heroes who started after 9/11 or whatever.
In many ways, Marvel is a paradox: things are cyclical and get reset every 5-10 years (back from dead, #1 relaunch, return of a legacy character, younger versions, etc.) yet it is also impossible for a reader to make heads and tails of the costume changes, clones, events, change of locations, villains becoming heroes, spin-off characters, etc. It's like leaving a simulation on and seeing how weird everything has evolved- until of course, a writer resets everything back. Like that time Spider-Man acted like an inexperienced teen again in the 2010s.
I think it's because fans are obsessed with canon and continuity with 616 and are attached to the one history, but the reality is, we have to deal with the sliding timescale/origin changes to even view 616 as a cohesive earth.
Marvel was fine from around 1961-1990(1). For the most part, in that time period I actually felt that Spidey, The Thing, Hulk, Dr. Doom, etc. actually lived in those time periods and aged appropriately. The Infinity Gauntlet would have been a great time to restart the universe- get the bad stuff out, resurrect characters, new team lineups, etc. And then around every 10 years thereafter.
There's a snobbery that "DC does that, and Marvel doesn't" yet 1) Marvel could have done it better; 2) Marvel continuity is currently a mess; 3) Who cares? Both companies copy each other anyway.