Five years wasted

[Sandy Hausler]

As has been said (and will be said again), as long as you enjoyed the comics, how can they be ruined or the time have been wasted?

Because the stories moved on? Because reality changed or there's some continuity disagreement between issue x and issue y, comic a and comic b?

Evidently by a lot of people. Forget I exist. LOL.

Sandy Hausler

[Clark_Kent]

I can only speak for myself, but this is how I look at it...the DCU is like a soap opera, and EVERYTHING happened even if som characters no longer remember. I collect several characters (mostly trade wait now), but we'll use Superman only here since the OP mentioned him. If you look at my bookshelf, you see this:

• Crisis on Infinite Earths (my personal starting point for MY DC Universe)
• Man of Steel
• (many stories following the MoS mini here)
• The Death / Return of Superman saga
• (many stories following his return here)
• Superman vs the Futuresmiths (at the end, in Superman vol 2 #200), Superman is traveling through time and comes across a fork in the road. The time tunnel he chooses leads to...)
• Birthright (his wrong way in the time tunnel led to his world being nearly identical to the old one, except elements of Birthright are littered in; new Krypton setup, Lex & Clark were friends, etc)
• (Many stories following the new Birthdight continuity here)
• Infinite Crisis (New Earth created, leading to...
• Secret Origin
• Up, Up, and Away (nearly identical to the old world, with elements of SO littered here and there)
• (many stories here)
• Final Crisis
• (more stories here)
• Flashpoint
• Morrison's Action Comics
• (New 52 stories here)
• Convergence (we find out, or at least led to believe, the Superman in New 52 is not just a younger version of the guy from MoS but a new version altogether)
• Lois & Clark
• Final Days of Superman
• Rebirth

So in my view, nothing is wasted because it is ONE long story. In my head canon, it begins with COIE and just moves forward. Every so often history is changed due to time travel, or worlds merging, or people like Pandora or Dr. Manhattan. Nothing gets "erased", because it still happened...it still happened because we, the audience, remembers that it did. Even if the character currently doesn't. Every book I own was worth the time and money I put into it because it doesn't have to be in-continuity in order to have happened. Current, PF-Superman doesn't have any recollection of killing Zod and eventually exiling himself, but he still did it and still had those adventures. His memory has just been altered.

So, I don't believe the last 5 years were wasted and I don't believe the 25 or so years I collected before the N52 were wasted, either. It's all one long story (to me). We're just in a new chapter of it.

Just my $2.50 (inflation).

[JasonTodd428]

Honestly, the only time I've felt like I wasted my time or money with comics in the last five years was when I didn't enjoy what I was reading. For me, as long as I enjoyed the book it was time well spent.

So, I don't believe the last 5 years were wasted and I don't believe the 25 or so years I collected before the N52 were wasted, either. It's all one long story (to me). We're just in a new chapter of it.

That's exactly how I see things too. That's probably why reboots and shifts in history don't really bother me as much as it seems to bother a lot of other people. In my mind every shift simply constitutes a new chapter in the lives of the characters and it's really just one part of a much longer longer story that has been told over the years.

[colonyofcells]

It is possible to have a head canon that starts from 1938 to the present. Incorporating the few years of New 52 into a head canon is very easy.

[Maxi]

Current, PF-Superman doesn't have any recollection of killing Zod and eventually exiling himself, but he still did it and still had those adventures. His memory has just been altered.

Why wouldn't he? It was implied a lot of times that he has all the memories of the past continuity.

[GlennSimpson]

Honestly, the only time I've felt like I wasted my time or money with comics in the last five years was when I didn't enjoy what I was reading. For me, as long as I enjoyed the book it was time well spent.



That's exactly how I see things too. That's probably why reboots and shifts in history don't really bother me as much as it seems to bother a lot of other people. In my mind every shift simply constitutes a new chapter in the lives of the characters and it's really just one part of a much longer longer story that has been told over the years.

I happen to generally agree with this statement.

[Prime]

If it's revealed that New 52 Superman was never "real" then yes, they are wasted.

[colonyofcells]

I agree with some of the earlier posters that it is possible to imagine the missing New 52 Superman as part of a new 52 alternate earth in the multiverse. Whatever dc no longer needs on earth 0 tends to be dumped on the infinite multiverse. We can call the New 52 alternate earth the earth where Superman hooked up with Wonder Woman. Maybe Superman and WW now have lots of kids on that alternate earth.

[manofsteel1979]

Why wouldn't he? It was implied a lot of times that he has all the memories of the past continuity.

Well preFlashpoint retconned it so that Superman never met a version of General Zod until the Johns/Donner story post INFINITE CRISIS and the then editor Matt Idelson said publicly there were no Zod's prior to the Donnerization version and thus their Supes never killed. Now? Who knows. There are indications he has bits of Post Crisis history and preFlashpoint history as parts of his history,but he also has silver age adventures as part of his history. I'm not sure even DC knows yet what's in or out. I doubt they will ever definitely tell us.

[colonyofcells]

Whatever is included in Superman history tends to change as current stories unfold and it is all up to current superman writers and future superman writers how much superman history starting from 1938 they want to mention. Many good stories also do not require any mention of superman history.

[Dataweaver]

And I'm not sure they should, either. I mean, go ahead and provide a rough outline of his career, in the sense of “these are the major turning points that brought on new phases in his life”; but leave it to the reader's imagination which stories happened during a given phase and which ones didn't.

[manofsteel1979]

Honestly, the only time I've felt like I wasted my time or money with comics in the last five years was when I didn't enjoy what I was reading. For me, as long as I enjoyed the book it was time well spent.



That's exactly how I see things too. That's probably why reboots and shifts in history don't really bother me as much as it seems to bother a lot of other people. In my mind every shift simply constitutes a new chapter in the lives of the characters and it's really just one part of a much longer longer story that has been told over the years.

I largely agree with that philosophy and how I treat head canon,but hard resets and reboots are unnecessary IMO. All they do ultimately is complicates things and divide fans into camps. There is a reason why Superman and WW struggle while Batman (who has never had a hard reboot and at most had a soft one with Year One and again with the New 52) don't. There's not the same divide in fandom. Batman in 1978 and 1998 and 2008 and now is all Batman. Can't really say the same with Superman. It's seen as " which Superman?".

[JasonTodd428]

I largely agree with that philosophy and how I treat head canon,but hard resets and reboots are unnecessary IMO. All they do ultimately is complicates things and divide fans into camps. There is a reason why Superman and WW struggle while Batman (who has never had a hard reboot and at most had a soft one with Year One and again with the New 52) don't. There's not the same divide in fandom. Batman in 1978 and 1998 and 2008 and now is all Batman. Can't really say the same with Superman. It's seen as " which Superman?".

I'm not so sure about the bolded. There is a definite division within the Batfandom only the focus of that division is different. Instead of fan division caused by the various "different" versions of Batman we've got a division that stems from his extended family that, in my mind anyway, almost identical to the one caused in Superman by all the reboots etc. We snipe at each other over Robins and Batgirls rather than Batman.

[colonyofcells]

It is easy to pretend that there has been only 1 superman from 1938 to present and the battles among supporters of Barry, pre flashpoint Wally and New 52 Wally are probably more serious. I sincerely believe that pre flashpoint Wally was the best Flash but every time I mention that casually, a few think I am intentionally trying to start World War 3.

[NexusTenebrare]

It is easy to pretend that there has been only 1 superman from 1938 to present and the battles among supporters of Barry, pre flashpoint Wally and New 52 Wally are probably more serious. I sincerely believe that pre flashpoint Wally was the best Flash but every time I mention that casually, a few think I am intentionally trying to start World War 3.

Um, for you maybe.
To me New52 Superman is a very diferent character from emo fascist Supes.