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  1. #1
    Astonishing Member Timothy Hunter's Avatar
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    Default Has A Reboot Ever Meant A Jumping Off Point For You?

    I don't have the emotional attactment to the DC Universe that's being published now that I did with Earth One, Earth Two, and Post Crisis. When I read a comic published by DC after 2011, it's primarily because of the creators and not out of desire to follow the characters? Do any other DC fans have a similar experience?

    On a similar note, are there any Legion of Superheroes fans who stopped caring about the franchise after Zero Hour or the other subsequent continuity resets?
    Last edited by Timothy Hunter; 05-06-2021 at 06:56 PM.

  2. #2
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    Yes. The New 52 gave me a good reason to stop buying all the D.C. titles because they all ended. If there had been a title that continued that I was reading, that might have kept me going back to the shop and then picking up other comics, as well. But because it was all over, there was no incentive to keep going to the not so local comic shop.

    There have been other times before that where a few titles rebooted so I gave up on those. But Flashpoint was the biggest jumping off point. And I haven't really been able to get back into it since. I've tried, but they make you wait forever to reveal the continuity and then they decide, nah, we're not doing that. I would have kept buying WONDER WOMAN if Rucka had stuck around. I have no idea what the continuity is for W.W. anymore. Same goes for most of the other franchises.

  3. #3
    Obsessed & Compelled Bored at 3:00AM's Avatar
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    I've quit comics twice. Once after Zero Hour and again after New 52...so yes

    The first was due to me not particularly caring for the 90s Extreme! creative direction the DCU was taking at that time and the latter was the creative direction that the New 52 was taking, in addition to the fact they'd wiped out all the DCU history I loved while replacing it largely with 90s Extreme! Nostalgia

  4. #4
    see beauty in all things. charliehustle415's Avatar
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    Absolutely!

    I shed a lot of titles during Rebirth and now with Infinite Frontier, I shed the rest other than Bat/Cat

    With Marvel after Secret Wars I completely jumped off until Hickman came back for X-Men, and even now I only follow the X-Line.


    I think the big two have learned that Reboots may gain some sales but it is a nice end point for a lot of completionists to jump off as well.

    Because me personally I love seeing a nice "The End" at the end of an issue of a title that is about to be rebooted.

  5. #5
    My Face Is Up Here Powerboy's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Timothy Hunter View Post
    I don't have the emotional attactment to the DC Universe that's being published now that I did with Earth One, Earth Two, and Post Crisis. When I read a comic published by DC after 2011, it's primarily because of the creators and not out of desire to follow the characters? Do any other DC fans have a similar experience?

    On a similar note, are there any Legion of Superheroes fans who stopped caring about the franchise after Zero Hour or the other subsequent continuity resets?
    Yes. It's partly age. I grew up on the Silver Age. I welcomed the Post-Crisis era. Then all the soft reboots happened and seemed to become a constant. By 2011, that reboot did not feel like the first reboot since 1986. It felt like the first reboot since whatever stories were soft rebooted out of continuity or into continuity a dozen times every year. It was just another Elseworlds/ Imaginary story to me.

    It's not just the Legion. I stopped caring about any of the comics because of the continuity resets. I don't think anything could get me back at this point. Even if they reinstated all of the Golden, Silver and so on somehow, or just promised all continuity would stay intact from now on, would anyone really believe them?

    I bought Batman '66, WW '77, Superman Smashes the Klan, that Frank Miller Superman origin, I tried the new Legion and I will collect Superman '78. In other words, I only get stuff that, by definition, is in it's own continuity and is a limited series.

    I prefer television shows now because they have a continuity that goes on long enough to have some length (unlike movies) but is finite and, while they may fudge some, they are short enough (usually seven seasons) that they won't start rewriting their own continuity.
    Power with Girl is better.

  6. #6
    Astonishing Member Timothy Hunter's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Powerboy View Post
    Yes. It's partly age. I grew up on the Silver Age. I welcomed the Post-Crisis era. Then all the soft reboots happened and seemed to become a constant. By 2011, that reboot did not feel like the first reboot since 1986. It felt like the first reboot since whatever stories were soft rebooted out of continuity or into continuity a dozen times every year. It was just another Elseworlds/ Imaginary story to me.
    I couldn't have said it better myself.

  7. #7
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    In the 70s, when I first got into comics, continuity seemed spotty at best, and a story could come up a year later that just straight up contradicted what had happened before (and there were still the occasional 'imaginary stories' that were explicitly not part of the shared setting anyway). But as continuity tightened, the stories got better, IMO, through the 80s, and there was some great stuff, with some amazing character development.

    Unfortunately, there seemed to be a drive towards famous writers being allowed to do whatever they wanted without any real editorial oversight, which is great in the case of explicitly out-of-canon stories like Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns or the Watchmen series, but when it began being applied to more general books in the line, it required all sorts of canon contortions, and finally, reboot after reboot, as the powers-that-be tried to streamline their own tangled mess and make some sort of sense of it all.

    And every time that happened, stuff I liked got purged. This character no longer exists, and there will be no more stories about them. Blegh.

    If I work in a kitchen used by a dozen other chefs to make food for thousands of different people, I don't get to throw out every ingredient or pot or pan that I personally don't plan on using. That's just short-sighted and dumb. Save the stuff *you* don't immediately need in case someone else wants to use it, or, ten years from now, when the taste-pendulum has swung back again and bell-bottoms are inexplicably fashionable again, *you* suddenly have an interest in writing about that character!

    That's why, even characters I can't stand, like Lobo or Ambush Bug, I don't advocate for killing off. Those characters have fans. And they are IP, of some notional financial value. Setting them on fire is setting money on fire. And killing off characters with the knowledge that you can just bring them back next year with zero consequence is worse, because it's lowering the value of the entire brand, not just one little bit of IP. It's reducing the fan investment *in the entire medium* by grinding in their faces that even the big splashy deaths are utterly meaningless. And if it doesn't matter if the character lives or dies, why should anyone care enough to even read about them?

    And that's my thought on reboots. They devalue the property by reducing fan investment. Whatever you like, it could just go away, so don't get invested. Don't care about these characters or the worlds they live in, because the owners will sweep them away and replace them in a second.

    And then they'll set something vaguely similar, but obviously smaller, since it lacks the rich history of the original, up in it's place, and be *shocked* that the amount of people willing to buy their product shrinks and shrinks, despite having willfully reduced the value of, and investment in, these characters and settings, over time.

    "Doctor, the patient is still bleeding!"

    "Quick! Cut off another limb! Maybe that will help?"

  8. #8
    Three Legged Member married guy's Avatar
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    Yup.
    New 52 had me dropping lots of books.
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  9. #9
    Leftbrownie Alpha's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Kelly View Post

    There have been other times before that where a few titles rebooted so I gave up on those. But Flashpoint was the biggest jumping off point. And I haven't really been able to get back into it since. I've tried, but they make you wait forever to reveal the continuity and then they decide, nah, we're not doing that. I would have kept buying WONDER WOMAN if Rucka had stuck around. I have no idea what the continuity is for W.W. anymore. Same goes for most of the other franchises.
    Read the new Wonder Woman book starting with 770. It's absolutely great and you don't have to worry about continuity. It's a great jumping on point. Wonder Girl by Joelle Jones also looks very promising and since it's a brand new character you don't have to worry about continuity either. Her Future State book (Yara Flor) was the best of the event.

  10. #10
    Extraordinary Member Restingvoice's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Timothy Hunter View Post
    I don't have the emotional attactment to the DC Universe that's being published now that I did with Earth One, Earth Two, and Post Crisis. When I read a comic published by DC after 2011, it's primarily because of the creators and not out of desire to follow the characters? Do any other DC fans have a similar experience?

    On a similar note, are there any Legion of Superheroes fans who stopped caring about the franchise after Zero Hour or the other subsequent continuity resets?
    Dude, every single DC fans I talked to in 2011-2012 is like this, to the point where I can't even share the experience of reading comics with them. The only ones I can share with is fellow new readers, because even if the older fans tried, read, and acknowledge it's good, the end word is always, it's not the same characters/continuity so I don't like it. I wanted to get hype but all I got was downers.

  11. #11
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    I dropped most of the DCU with Flashpoint.

  12. #12
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    I’m a fanboy from the 70’s. B/B, Worlds Finest, Action, Batman, Detective, GL/GA, the Legion, etc. I stuck around with DC through all the rebooting, both hard and soft, enjoyed, Wally, Connor Hawke, and Kyle as legacy characters, but the seemingly rudderless ship that DC became got me tired. Didio spouting that there’d be no Action or Detective #1000 at the time was a factor, I’m not a Grant Morrison fan and Final Crisis became the Final straw. I’m the same way with Marvel, Heroes Reborn, the Clone Saga displacing Peter Parker, and eventually Bendis fucking over my Avengers franchise was my stopping point. I’m in a severe ‘been there, read that’ mood with comics these last few years. Tired of ALL the new #1’s every damn time a new writer or artist jumps on. I liked the Doom book Marvel just killed, I’m leery of the new Joker book for the fact that the character is being overused, but I will try 12 issues if it gets that far, I am loyal to Captain America and Bruce Wayne, Thor, The Hulk and Green Lantern too, but I’ve quashed a lot of stuff as well. It’s age I think, but again, it’s also a lack of creativity from the big 2 that leaves me for ‘Ehhhh...’ when the new solicits arrive and that never used to be the case. Oh well.

  13. #13
    DC/Collected Editions Mod The Darknight Detective's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Sutekh View Post
    In the 70s, when I first got into comics, continuity seemed spotty at best, and a story could come up a year later that just straight up contradicted what had happened before (and there were still the occasional 'imaginary stories' that were explicitly not part of the shared setting anyway). But as continuity tightened, the stories got better, IMO, through the 80s, and there was some great stuff, with some amazing character development.
    IMO, the Bronze Age (primarily the '70s) was the Golden Age of continuity, not the '80s (the DCU).
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  14. #14
    Ultimate Member sifighter's Avatar
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    Honestly it’s a very depends on what I’m reading scenario because if it’s a character I like and am reading and they get rebooted I can drop off but if it’s a character I’ve never tried before I actually find that helps me jump on. Using the new 52 as an example, I’m a Superman reader but I didn’t care much for the main book reboot so I dropped it but I was never a huge reader of Swamp Thing and Barry Allen so the New 52 gave me the chance to jump on and learn of those characters.

    So I guess in cases where I got a strong attachment to the book yes I can drop off but in cases where I have none it provides the chance to try something new out.
    "It's fun and it's cool, so that's all that matters. It's what comics are for, Duh."
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  15. #15
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    I don't know. It seems like the current vogue in writing is to delay the audience satisfaction as long as possible--on the theory that this anticipation will keep the audience interested for more revelations down the road. So if I pick up a new book, I don't get any answers in the first issue. I'm expected to keep buying the book as it slowly drops bits of knowledge from an eye dropper. But you never find out what this is all really about until a year or two later or maybe even longer. And sometimes the book is cancelled before they get that far.

    I would much rather get some answers at the start, so I know where I am in the story.

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