Tabula Rasa: The Do’s and Don’ts of the Reboot/Retcon
Marvel NOW
Tabula Rasa: The Do’s and Don’ts of the Reboot/Retcon by Jerry Whitworth
Whether it’s a complete clean slate where creators are given the tools to reinvent a universe as they see fit or a soft nudge to make characters carry the appearance of timelessness, reboots and retcons in some form or another are part of the reality of the comic book industry. While there are advocates for allowing characters to grow, age, and move on, the general consensus of comic books since the start of the Silver Age is that characters should be relatively frozen in amber, where their stories continue on but they more-than-not remain within the same framework they’ve always been. Even a character like Spider-Man who went from a high school student to a college graduate and teacher has remained in some manner unchanged, where his life is different yet he still crawls walls at night, battles the likes of the Vulture and Doctor Octopus across the big apple’s skyline, and still copes with what he views as the worst luck in the world (a popular term for this by Stan Lee is “the illusion of change”). In keeping with the Spider-Man example, Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada often championed for Spider-Man to revert back somewhat to basics under the idea that his evolution deprives this and future generations of the stories of the character from what many view as his best years (resulting in the reboot One More Day), which is the main argument for characters to remain perpetually static. More famously, DC Comics is known for the reboot Crisis on Infinite Earths where various Earths that represented different eras, franchises, and concepts over several decades were mashed into a single Earth (franchises like the Justice Society, Justice League, Marvel Family, Freedom Fighters, and Captain Atom went from distinct, separate settings to sharing one). Issues resulting from this event would arise and result in subsequent fixes, such as Zero Hour: Crisis in Time, Infinite Crisis, and Flashpoint. Marvel Comics will be treading similar ground for its upcoming Marvel NOW! company wide reboot.
Read MoreThrough the Ages: Transition in Comics – Part Four
Through the Ages: Transition in Comics – Part Four by Jerry Whitworth
(see Part One , Part Two , and Part Three here if you haven’t already)
MODERN AGE
Flash Wonderland
While Grant Morrison and Alex Ross helped nudge a new direction in the comics industry, they certainly didn’t get there alone. Two men who helped push this new direction to what it is today are Geoff Johns and Dan DiDio. Johns was an up-and-comer in the film industry mentored by legendary director Richard Donner (Superman, Lethal Weapon series) when he met DC Comics editor Eddie Berganza who offered Johns the opportunity to pitch ideas. One of those ideas reached fruition with Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E., an update on the DC property Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy. However, his next two projects at the publisher would provide much more fanfare. The Flash, coming off a longtime critically-received run under scribe Mark Waid, needed a fill-in team to cover the book while an ongoing team could be established. Johns came aboard with the storyline Wonderland and fans enjoyed it so much, DC found their new ongoing writer. When James Robinson moved on to work on projects in Hollywood, Johns would replace his position as co-writer on JSA with David S. Goyer and he struck gold again. Meanwhile, Dan DiDio, who was a writer and story editor for Mainframe Entertainment (ReBoot, Beast Wars: Transformers), was hired as an administrator at DC, first as vice president of editorial in 2002 and two years later as executive editor for the DC Universe. It was around this time DC Comics vigorously pursued exclusive contracts for work at the publisher, including luring talent from Marvel.
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