Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Continuity

Does the past matter after a reboot?

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To be fair, I don’t know if any of us really wanted to see a fourth film of Maguire’s puffy prematurely-balding version of Peter Parker.

We are living in the age of the reboot.

Last week, Amazing Spider-Man relaunched the webhead’s cinematic universe while the body of the old Tobey Maguire series was still warm. There’s a new Dallas series on TV. Sherlock Holmes revisionist history movies are being released alongside a present-day version of the detective on BBC TV.

So do those older, original versions matter?

Alternate Future History

Think about your favorite TV show or series of books. It’s a serialized, ongoing story that builds with every installment and references its past. You love it. You watch every episode and buy every volume. You are a super-fan.

What if there was some prior series with the same characters and concepts, but it was not a part of the current story you love? Would you buy it? This is increasingly common in our age of reboots. If you loved the new JJ Abrams Star Trek movie – which departs from the traditional Trek timeline post-Enterprise – are the other TV series and films automatically a must-watch? What about past Spider-Man movies, original Dallas, Sherlock Holmes books, Charlie’s Angels, G.I. Joe, Inspector Gadget, or Battlestar Galactica?

To me, Garfield is the perfect embodiment of Peter Parker – thin, gangly, awkward, and genuine.

Probably not. All those past series are just an alternate reality to the present ones. You don’t need to watch both.

Case Study: DC’s Crisis of Collected Editions

DC Comics  is one year into their successful line-wide New 52 reboot. Now they’re faced with a major crisis: they have a huge back catalog of trade paperbacks and hardcovers that might not matter.

DC’s rich history of iconic characters stretches back to 1938. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman – these heroes emerged as pure archetypes and over many decades evolved into the rounder, more dynamic characters they are today. There are many hundreds of older issues of their exploits available to reprint and press into the hands of eager young fans of today.

Action Comics #1, 1938

Except, today’s characters are not the same people – and I don’t just mean their personalities. DC’s Crisis On Infinite Earths rebooted everyone back in 1984, making post-1984 books the equivalent of new-Trek. Some of the characters beneath the masks of Flash and Green Lantern weren’t even the same as before! Then, after many years of tweaking, DC rebooted again last fall – creating a new-new-Trek.

What wasn’t immediately evident from those #1 issues was that some characters survived more intact than others. Batman’s corner of the DC Universe? Seemingly mostly the same, even if Bruce is younger than before. Superman? Origin retold from scratch, parents now dead, never in a relationship with Lois. Wonder Woman? Major changes in the Amazonian status quo, right down to her parentage.

Which brings me to my titular question: do DC Comics Collections matter? Yes, there are the Watchmen and the Killing Joke, the indisputable evergreen classics of the comics medium that will move units regardless of if their stories still count for anything.

But what about DC Archives, their premium hardcover reprints of Golden and Silver Age comics? What about Wonder Woman #205? Action Comics #527? The 70s Green Arrow / Green Lantern series?

Action Comics #1, 2011

None of it counts in continuity, so does it matter anymore? These classic stories have little to nothing to do with the current state of my favorite heroine. They aren’t all prohibitive classics. So, is there any point in reprinting them?

(Marvel doesn’t have this problem. Aside from some isolated soft reboots of certain characters, everything still counts, all the way back to the 40s. Every issue of X-Men is acknowledged and in continuity.)

Does the alternate past matter? You decide.

I want to know what you think. Do older stories still have a place post-reboot? If you loved JJ Abrams’s Star Trek did you immediately jump back to rewatch the original series?

And, on our case study: Should DC even bother to reprint non-seminal stories of characters other than Batman if they don’t matter in current continuity?

What do you think?

DC New 52 Review: Legion of Super-Heroes #1

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In my opinion, the entire endeavor of writing for and reading comic books is about continuity. The comics that appeal to me the most are the ones with the longest continuity. That’s part of why I love X-Men and avoid DC – X-Men refers back to 1963, while DC restarts or erases whenever they hit a tangle.

Given my predilection for continuity, I’m almost universally disinterested in alternate timelines and possible futures. What’s the point if it has nothing to do with the other thousands of comics I’ve read?

Legion of Superheroes presents an interesting wrinkle to my rule. Yes, it takes place in the 31st Century with increasinly less frequent interactions with Superman and Superboy, but it has been around for hundreds of issues – it has its own far-flung future continuity. However, in a wrinkle to the wrinkle, since Legion’s 1958 introduction this is the fifth version of the team.

Sounds way too convoluted. But, more importantly, is it any good?

Legion of Superheroes #1

Written by Paul Levitz, art by Francis Portela

Rating: 2.5 of 5 – Okay

In a Line: “You sure this isn’t a training mission?”

#140char Review: Legion of Superheroes #1 tosses readers in the deep end of 31st Century. Enjoyable, but overload for new readers w/ too few emotional beats.

CK Says: Consider it.

Legion of Superheroes #1 plunges forward with careless glee, its only concession to new readers being a set of attractively designed introductory captions explaining the homeworlds and powers of the many, many heroes we meet.

The story on the ground doesn’t need too much more introduction. Chameleon Boy leads a team to infiltrate a militarized planet that broke contact with the outside world. Levitz offhandedly gives the idea that all Legionnaires are well-publicized, which helps establish quite a few facts about the intergalactic heroes and the culture they operate in. Otherwise, their infiltration mission is fairly rote until they hit an obstacle at the end of the issue.

It’s the B-plot back at the ranch that drags. We meet a slew of people tossing around references that make no sense at all. While introducing tons of heroes on panel helps set the scope of the book and probably delights longtime readers, it was overload for me – especially because many of them barely had a line.

It’s all par for the course for a book with a big cast steeped in continuity, but Levitz makes the critical mistake of tying all of our emotional beats to knowing what the characters are talking about. We aren’t given any reason to care about anyone just based on their action in the present.

From there I quickly turned off to this issue. It’s a rare case where I would have rather watched brawl with less running commentary, as Francis Portela’s art is bold and sure throughout. He makes this set of strangers out to be iconic heroes, but I can’t find a reason to care about any of them. (I was slightly put off by a close-to-verbatim ripoff of X-Men’s Thunderbird/Warpath, but who knows – maybe this costume came first?)

It’s a shame Legion verges on unintelligible for new readers like me, because I think there is a lot to enjoy in this re-debut. This issue could have presented more of a primer on what the Legion is and the purpose they serve in the 31st Century. Without that, I doubt it will attract many new fans.