So there has been a decent amount of discussion relating to comic books lately, most specifically a thread on R&P about characters being retcon to be gay and OT's discussion of the current writer and artist leaving the Batwoman comic after being told that under no circumstances were they going to be able to rewrite Killer Croc's Origin for Villain Month or have Batwoman get hitched. (LOTS OF TEXT INCOMING!)
And one thing that keeps coming up in these threads is status quo. That certain things need to stay a certain way. That certain things are not allowed to change. And honestly I find that to be one of the biggest flaws in both comic book writing and the fandom.
That's not to say that changing the status quo is always a good thing. I've been reading comics rather consistently for 25 years. And I can think of many times changing the status quo of one of the two Mainstream comic universes was a bad thing. Onslaught Saga, Heroes Reborn, Countdown, Amazons Attack, Identity Crisis, House of M, One More Day and others were all pretty bad stories that did nothing to help anything about the characters or the stories told.
But that doesn't mean we should stay slave to the status quo. Things -should- change, things should be different. Someone picking up a Batman comic for the first time in years -should- have some questions. Otherwise, no story means anything.
Let me give you an example. Three years ago, DC published a universe-wide set of crossovers. Blackest Knight and Brightest Day. It was Green Lantern Mythos centric and followed a story where the dead heroes of the DCU were corrupted by Black Lantern Rings and resurrected as villains. Yet despite showing some heroes their worst moments, some villians their shining hours and moving forward it doesn't matter. Because right after they were all over Flashpoint happened and the New 52 resulted. All the character growth that occurred was gone.
He's another example from Marvel. After the events of Secret Invasion, Marvel set a new status quo called Dark Reign. Norman Osborn (the former Green Goblin) kills the Skrull Queen on live television while most of the heroes are shown to be skrulls. He leaps into a position of power replacing SHIELD with his own group called HAMMER. He's revealed to be crazy on live TV. The end result, return to SHIELD being around and everything going back to normal. No distrust or hatred just "Yup the heroes are back! Cheer!" And it never get's referenced again save for a few off hand references to a "Goblin Cult" that is a thinly veiled Skin Nazi thing and a three issue "Return of the Dark Avengers" plot that went nowhere.
So those stories meant nothing. They happened, but then they didn't matter. Think of your own life and the events in it. Tell me when the things that have happened to you before haven't shaded how you viewed a situation that happens later?
The two stories I mentioned above are both very good stories, that just because of the revert to the Status Quo mean nothing. Now I will tell you about two bad stories that actually went somewhere.
AvX: A story that finally resolved the idea of the mutant messiah that started in 2007. The Avengers stand against the X-Men who are protecting Hope, the possible mutant messiah as the Phoenix Force heads to Earth to take her as a host. And it goes EXTREMELY off the rails and gets worse and worse and worse until I almost stopped reading Marvel because of it.
But here's the thing, there are consequences to that story. It makes Captain America realize he had been unintentionally excluding a lot of mutants from the Avengers. It made Cyclops feel that humanity as a whole couldn't be trusted. And it reactivated the X-Gene in those who should have been mutants but were stopped by the whole House of M crap. It's almost a year later and those consequences are still playing out. There is still distrust, there is still attempts to build bridges. Cyclops's team is viewed as terrorists even though they only help the new emerging mutants. These are good things that lead to good stories. Not all the stories are good of course but it's a shake up that was desperately needed and has mostly worked... despite questionable art design for some characters (I'm looking at you Emma, Magneto, Captain America and Beast)
Identity Crisis: Another story that I personally don't like. It revolves around the idea of Doctor Light, a somewhat B-list villain, that rapes the wife of the Elognated Man and has his memories removed. When the Elongated Man's wife is murdered those who erased Dr. Light's mind is sure it his him. Thus the JLA investigate and when the real killer is revealed... it makes no freaking sense. But that doesn't matter for all of this.
There are consequences to this story too. Not all the members of the JL know about the mind wipe so it creates a divide between those heroes and the ones who did the wiping. Batman in particular is upset because it's revealed that he actually caught them in the act, only to have Zatanna wipe his mind of it as well. It creates a divide among the heroes that last for a rather decent amount of time all things considered. And makes it so the Justice League cannot even trust it's own members, instead splitting into smaller groups based on the lines of "was that the right thing to do?"
Okay this is getting longer than I meant it to get. I wanted to bring up other things like how movie continuity should never be compared to comic continuity. And how changing things up for movies and cartoons is a good thing. But honestly, I want to hear other people's thoughts on this.
What do you all think of the status quo in comics.
And one thing that keeps coming up in these threads is status quo. That certain things need to stay a certain way. That certain things are not allowed to change. And honestly I find that to be one of the biggest flaws in both comic book writing and the fandom.
That's not to say that changing the status quo is always a good thing. I've been reading comics rather consistently for 25 years. And I can think of many times changing the status quo of one of the two Mainstream comic universes was a bad thing. Onslaught Saga, Heroes Reborn, Countdown, Amazons Attack, Identity Crisis, House of M, One More Day and others were all pretty bad stories that did nothing to help anything about the characters or the stories told.
But that doesn't mean we should stay slave to the status quo. Things -should- change, things should be different. Someone picking up a Batman comic for the first time in years -should- have some questions. Otherwise, no story means anything.
Let me give you an example. Three years ago, DC published a universe-wide set of crossovers. Blackest Knight and Brightest Day. It was Green Lantern Mythos centric and followed a story where the dead heroes of the DCU were corrupted by Black Lantern Rings and resurrected as villains. Yet despite showing some heroes their worst moments, some villians their shining hours and moving forward it doesn't matter. Because right after they were all over Flashpoint happened and the New 52 resulted. All the character growth that occurred was gone.
He's another example from Marvel. After the events of Secret Invasion, Marvel set a new status quo called Dark Reign. Norman Osborn (the former Green Goblin) kills the Skrull Queen on live television while most of the heroes are shown to be skrulls. He leaps into a position of power replacing SHIELD with his own group called HAMMER. He's revealed to be crazy on live TV. The end result, return to SHIELD being around and everything going back to normal. No distrust or hatred just "Yup the heroes are back! Cheer!" And it never get's referenced again save for a few off hand references to a "Goblin Cult" that is a thinly veiled Skin Nazi thing and a three issue "Return of the Dark Avengers" plot that went nowhere.
So those stories meant nothing. They happened, but then they didn't matter. Think of your own life and the events in it. Tell me when the things that have happened to you before haven't shaded how you viewed a situation that happens later?
The two stories I mentioned above are both very good stories, that just because of the revert to the Status Quo mean nothing. Now I will tell you about two bad stories that actually went somewhere.
AvX: A story that finally resolved the idea of the mutant messiah that started in 2007. The Avengers stand against the X-Men who are protecting Hope, the possible mutant messiah as the Phoenix Force heads to Earth to take her as a host. And it goes EXTREMELY off the rails and gets worse and worse and worse until I almost stopped reading Marvel because of it.
But here's the thing, there are consequences to that story. It makes Captain America realize he had been unintentionally excluding a lot of mutants from the Avengers. It made Cyclops feel that humanity as a whole couldn't be trusted. And it reactivated the X-Gene in those who should have been mutants but were stopped by the whole House of M crap. It's almost a year later and those consequences are still playing out. There is still distrust, there is still attempts to build bridges. Cyclops's team is viewed as terrorists even though they only help the new emerging mutants. These are good things that lead to good stories. Not all the stories are good of course but it's a shake up that was desperately needed and has mostly worked... despite questionable art design for some characters (I'm looking at you Emma, Magneto, Captain America and Beast)
Identity Crisis: Another story that I personally don't like. It revolves around the idea of Doctor Light, a somewhat B-list villain, that rapes the wife of the Elognated Man and has his memories removed. When the Elongated Man's wife is murdered those who erased Dr. Light's mind is sure it his him. Thus the JLA investigate and when the real killer is revealed... it makes no freaking sense. But that doesn't matter for all of this.
There are consequences to this story too. Not all the members of the JL know about the mind wipe so it creates a divide between those heroes and the ones who did the wiping. Batman in particular is upset because it's revealed that he actually caught them in the act, only to have Zatanna wipe his mind of it as well. It creates a divide among the heroes that last for a rather decent amount of time all things considered. And makes it so the Justice League cannot even trust it's own members, instead splitting into smaller groups based on the lines of "was that the right thing to do?"
Okay this is getting longer than I meant it to get. I wanted to bring up other things like how movie continuity should never be compared to comic continuity. And how changing things up for movies and cartoons is a good thing. But honestly, I want to hear other people's thoughts on this.
What do you all think of the status quo in comics.