How did Blackest Night retcon anything? If anything, Blackest night streamlined the GL storyline post-Rebirth without having to retcon anything.bastardofmelbourne said:
Batman Incorporated Reveal Promises Spoilerific Changes
- Thread starter Fanghawk
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And I'm glad to see him go, because I never really liked the way he wrote Batman and it always annoyed me that he was so attached to it. Eight fucking years of Grant Morrison, I mean...Jesus.Agent_Dark said:
He should stick to writing Superman. All-Star Superman was the best thing I've ever read written by Morrison.
The problem is twofold;knight steel said:
1. There's a turnover in writers and editors. New writers have little consideration or respect for the canon established by previous writers, and new editors tend to impose their own subjective tastes onto the material produced under their watch. So characters that the new writers/editors liked get resurrected, or made more prominent, and characters they dislike get killed off or sidelined. Characters created by previous writers, no matter how good they are, get screwed because the new writers don't want to work with another writer's characters (Cassandra Cain, for example) and the writer's own pet characters get centre stage (case in point, Damian Wayne). Plot developments that editors disliked are forcibly retconned, often regardless of how long they've been in place, and characters they liked are resurrected under the same circumstances.
2. At the same time, the fans of comic books are both highly resistant to change (they don't want to lose characters or plot elements that they liked) and they tend to turn over at the same rate as the writers, every seven or so years. This means the fanbase is childishly resistant to new elements being introduced, such as new characters, regardless of how good they are, and it also means that the writers can get away with retconning them out of existence in about six to seven years (Damian Wayne, 2006-2012) on the basis that the original fans are no longer reading the comics.
tl;dr, the whole thing is a combination of disrespect for previous writer's contributions to the canon and the fickleness of the fanbase, which will hate something because it's new and not because it's bad, then forget why they were angry in a couple of years.
It retconned very little to do with the Green Lanterns - the way they are at the moment, DC doesn't want to touch them - but it did resurrect a number of minor characters, including Martian Manhunter, Maxwell Lord, Deadman, the Reverse-Flash, Jade, the first Captain Boomerang and the original Firestorm.MrGalactus said:
True, but does that count as a retcon? They didn't say the characters never died, and they were only killed earlier specifically to be Black Lanters.bastardofmelbourne said:
For Manhunter, Firestorm, Captain Boomerang and Maxwell Lord, who were killed separately years beforehand in different plots? Yeah, that's a retcon. Generally, when you resurrect a dead character because you need them for something, it's a retcon. Especially if they replace legacy characters that succeeded them - like the second Captain Boomerang and the second Firestorm.MrGalactus said:
There were characters killed within the story, like Hawkman and Hawkwoman, who were resurrected at the end of it, but I didn't include them for that exact reason - it's not really a "retcon" when it happened within the same storyline, then it's just a cop-out. Firestorm and Boomerang were killed in Identity Crisis, Maxwell Lord in Infinite Crisis, and Manhunter in Final Crisis. Their deaths had no real connection to the Blackest Night Storyline, and they were pulled back because the writers needed them for...whatever. That's a retcon as far as I'm concerned.
Well, now I'm curious as to what we generally count as a retcon. I had always counted a later-made plot point that was inconsistent with an earlier-made plot point being considered in-canon, replacing the old story and it acting from then on as if the old story never happened. In Blackest Night, some previously dead characters come back to life as part of the continuous story. Blackest Night even explains why important DC characters struggle to stay dead.bastardofmelbourne said:
I never really ACTUALLY followed the comics, but I do like to stay informed about events at a very surface level and so I am very confused. How does Batman Incorporated even exist in the New 52? It seemed like a very new direction they were taking Batman in, as far as the goal he was working towards, and very much something he would do later in his career, so how does that mesh with the whole "reboot" thing the New 52 was going for?
Yeah I know and it pisses me of because then the universe becomes stale/uninteresting making it impossible to get into as I know that most thing will simply go back to status quo so why should I care.bastardofmelbourne said:
That why I prefer manga/alternative universe as when something changes most of the time [except for some manga such as DBZ] that change will stay and effect to overall story and be refereed to and impact later development meaning that I never know what will happen and can get hooked ^_^.
The best way to fix this in my opinion is-
1:when passing on a work to make sure the new person is a fan and respects previous works and have the last writer stay somewhat involved intill thing are going smoothly. Failing that simply have the boss tell them that certain retcons are off the table.
2
on't instantly cave in to fan pressure wait it out and if there is minor things you can change to make things better do it, but if something is really bad scrap it as long as you can do so in a good and logical way and make this change permanent thus not really making it a retcon.
What they're killing him now? Man I was just learning to tolerate and kind of like the little turd.
Way to ruin a progression like that DC. Thaaaanks.
Yeah I haven't been strictly following the comics what with my... method of obtaining them being a shoddy little run down interest store that has them only months after they hit shelves. But no worries Tumblr usually spoils everything before I can properly sit down and read them anyway...
I really should stick to Deviantart but I get less feedback on drawing there. How ironic.
Way to ruin a progression like that DC. Thaaaanks.
Yeah I haven't been strictly following the comics what with my... method of obtaining them being a shoddy little run down interest store that has them only months after they hit shelves. But no worries Tumblr usually spoils everything before I can properly sit down and read them anyway...
I really should stick to Deviantart but I get less feedback on drawing there. How ironic.
Death has no value in comics. Any meaning or poinance is ultimately reversed, the first time it happens it might be a shock and even a little saddening, but once they turn back up with a "I thought you were dead!" "I got better." exchange, we have been permanently made immune to any sadness their future death(s) might (try to) evoke.
Well, I don't know. You could argue that it wasn't technically a retcon because the story gave an explanation for it, but that would blot out most of the retcons done in comics - there's usually some dimensional warping or time travel or magical pact that explains why the old stuff gets overwritten. I'd still call that stuff a retcon, because what's being done in practice is that the writers are overwriting the continuity because they need character X for whatever reason.MrGalactus said:
Most of the time, the consequence of these revivals is that the dead character goes back to work as if they'd never actually died, and if they had a successor character they're not mentioned again, so it retcons the death in all practical terms.
The best way to avoid this kind of continuity nonsense is to stick to creator-owned titles. You brought up manga, which is a great example as most manga is produced by one writer/artist team for the entirety of its run, and there's no conflict of creative vision.knight steel said:Yeah I know and it pisses me of because then the universe becomes stale/uninteresting making it impossible to get into as I know that most thing will simply go back to status quo so why should I care.
That why I prefer manga/alternative universe as when something changes most of the time [except for some manga such as DBZ] that change will stay and effect to overall story and be refereed to and impact later development meaning that I never know what will happen and can get hooked ^_^.
The best way to fix this in my opinion is-
1:when passing on a work to make sure the new person is a fan and respects previous works and have the last writer stay somewhat involved intill thing are going smoothly. Failing that simply have the boss tell them that certain retcons are off the table.
2
In the West, most creator-owned titles are limited series that run anywhere from three to twelve to forty or so (at most) issues with a defined start and end point, unlike the DC titles which run indefinitely with the same character. The fact that the story has to end when the writer goes onto something different is the price you pay for having a continuity that makes sense and treats you like an adult. Warren Ellis does a lot of creator-owned stuff, which is great because he's a great author, but he's infamously incapable of finishing any of the dozen or so titles he has running at any one time. What he does put out, though, is some of the most original and interesting stuff in comics.
The best analogy for any non-comic fans here is that the major titles are like EA and Activision, pushing out homogenised Modern Warfare-style games in established IPs every year like clockwork with no real innovation, and the creator-owned titles are all the renegades like Valve and the indie gaming scene, which produce one-off creative masterpieces on a regular basis but rarely do sequels.
Yeah your right, It's just to bad that others such as batman can't pick it up as they would benefit greatly from it but they make to much money for the company and would never become creator owned titles with a definite end.bastardofmelbourne said:
I mean it not like just because your creator owned and plan to have an ending doesn't mean you can't be long running just look at one piece it's 700 chapter in and is just half way finished!
This is annoying. I had become a fan of Damian since Morrison's run on Batman and Robin in 2009, it has been very interesting seeing his growth from a spoilt brat who had no problem with killing to what he is now and I was looking forward to seeing where he would go from here.
New 52 isn't a textbook universe-wide reboot, but more of an excuse to rework continuity as DC sees fit. Superman and Wonder Woman, for example, had the slate wiped clean so DC could rebuild their backstories from the ground up. Batman and Green Lantern, on the other hand, had versions of events from the past 3-5 years worked into New 52's status quo. For example, Batman kept the stuff with Damian and Batman Incorporated, but dropped Bruce Wayne's "death" and Final Crisis. (Once New 52 began, that period is referred to as the time Bruce "disappeared"). Green Lantern got the same thing: Blackest Night still happened, but earlier storylines (GL: Rebirth) got axed.Gatx said:
It's not a horrible approach. New readers get a jumping on point (with the option of easily finding recent trades of referenced material), while current readers can continue stories without being cut short. Still, I have to admit there would be an appeal in seeing New 52 emerge from the beginning instead of 5 years in. On the bright side, DC is kinda doing that with their Earth One books, so I guess it balances out.