Crisis and reboot were a great idea. Execution was lacking due to mediocre ideas (The legion is always a pita this way tbh)
Crisis and reboot were a great idea. Execution was lacking due to mediocre ideas (The legion is always a pita this way tbh)
Wolfman himself seems to have come to regret at least some of COIE's fallout, at least when it came to its effects on stories he worked on. Quoted from Wikipedia:
"I wrote the original Donna Troy origin story back in the first Titans run. She had never had one and was, in fact, not a "real" character (if you can call any of them real). She was a computer simulation of Wonder Woman as a girl. That story also named her Donna Troy and set up everything that followed. Unfortunately, after Crisis on Infinite Earths and the Wonder Woman revamp, we had to go back and redo it again as a brand new Wonder Woman being born on Earth could not have rescued the girl from the burning building. I wish we had been able to keep it as I think it's gone insane now. I just wanted a simple origin story. I came up with the original, and then [in "Who is Donna Troy?"] George [Pérez] and I simply elaborated on what had been done, giving her real knowledge of who she was. I would love to say that everything after "Who is Donna Troy?" should be forgotten, but that's not the way continuity works, sadly."
He was right that risks needed to be taken or else there would be no rewards. But surely risks can be taken without nuking what came before? I think stuff like killing off Barry and Kara were pretty big risks and were well done overall that set the stage for obvious changes and story progressions.
Not to mention him and George turned the Titans franchise around by taking risks and doing new things without the need to reboot anything. Surely other franchises could benefit from similar storytelling?
How ironic that it was George Perez who ended up writing the revamped Wonder Woman book that threw the Wonder Girl origin out the window. I've seen several posts on this board that have suggested that everything - Wonder Girl, Justice Society, World War II - could've all stayed intact had Perez just made Wonder Woman come to Man's World back in the 40s. Her Amazon storyline could've stayed the same, she would just be much older. Not that it would've matter about being older when she is ageless. Missed opportunities.
And thats why SUPERMAN HAS TO BE THE FIRST HERO EVAR!!!!1 idea is dumb frankly. The most outstanding and inspiring ? Sure. The first ever ? Nah.
To be fair to Perez, I don't think he wanted his Wonder Woman revamp to be in the present day. If given the choice, he would have had her at least be a JL founder and be the one who found infant Donna and brought her to Paradise Island. Why the higher ups at DC didn't see the obvious potential problems of severing Wonder Girl's ties to Wonder Woman is a question for the ages.
And yes, they very easily could have represented Wonder Woman's entire history. She lends herself very well to that. It would have solved the Diana Prince and romance with Steve "problems" that they didn't want anymore: all that happened back in the 1940s. And due his powers making him ageless in some versions, Superman could have debuted in the 1930s as well along with her and the JSA. It would mean losing the Smallville cast in the present day, but that's no big loss outside of Lana IMO. Netting two out of the three Trinity members would have solved some problems and make their respective worlds richer.
Why is it a dumb idea exactly? It wasn't causing any problems for the first half of DC's publication history. The JSA didn't come before him until the late 80s. Why should that idea be considered the better one?
I'm one of the the "they should have either left it alone or completely rebooted all of it" folks, but I get what Wolfman's saying. Things were rough.
Probably the worst thing CoIE did to DC was convince its decision makers that blowing up their whole world is the right answer to every slowdown in sales.
You can either have your OG Supes, in which case his supporting cast is all dead etc or you have modern supes with prior heroes. Theres no point in making Superman modern and more relatable to then cut off a chunk of your history, characters and any potential narrative because 'he has to be first'.
That's not a given though. Alan Moore did a take on it with Supreme by making expies of the Smallville cast for Supreme's adventures in the 1940s, while in the modern day he created expies of Lois, Jimmy, Perry etc. Superman can debut in the Golden Age with the JSA, and return in the modern age with his core supporting cast being the Daily Planet staff. The Kents are dead half the time anyway, so it's not like them being dead in the present would be detrimental. Pete Ross....is anyone heavily invested in Pete Ross? Again, the only major loss would be Lana.
And in pre-Crisis Earth-1, he was one of the first if not THE first superheroes. There was nothing nonsensical about it because people didn't expect the JSA to come before him. The JSA being on the same Earth as him and coming before him is the retcon, and many fans seem to retroactively act as if it was always that way and to say otherwise is strange and doesn't make sense.
All of this. And I have to wonder if Wolfman himself wanted to start everything over from the beginning. It seems like whatever he had envisioned for the post-Crisis DCU is different than what actually came about. Maybe his would have made way more sense?
Hal Jordan is trash. Green Lantern needs an actual interesting character to helm it. I read Geoff Johns run in the franchise and for all nuance and depth he gave to old villains like Sinstero, breed new life with characters like Black Hand, awesome new characters like Atrocitus the star of it all still remained boring, flat and lame. I don't understand why DC continues to keep Jordan at the helm. Give John a shot at being lead and see how that goes. I'll be fine with Kyle getting his lead status back or have the duo of Simon and Jessica get a crack at it. Hal's time is up.
Many of the traditional DC super-heroes are what I'd call open concept. They can be changed to suit a particular approach that a writer wants to take. This might lead to people thinking these characters are boring. Oliver Queen seemed that way in the 1960s when he had lost his back-up feature in WORLD'S FINEST and could only be seen in JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA or sometimes in a team-up story if he was lucky. But because he was a malleable character, other writers and artists could do what they wanted with him and give him a new character.
It's the same with Hal Jordan, Barry Allen, Ray Palmer, Arthur Curry. They might end up in a run that redefines their character for the better. Or they might end up in a wrong-way run. In time someone else will come along with a new idea and they'll change again. That's why you don't throw these characters in the trash. No more than you would James Bond.
Unfortunately for some newer character creations they are so narrowly defined that they can't change when creative teams change or new trends take hold. They are good at being one thing, but they can't be adapted to a new landscape.
Since Bruce never will, Alfred shoulda killed Joker for what he did to Jason
DC doesn't do if enough with their mystic and magic based teams.
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