Worth Reading

Interesting Steven Grant column on how we “respect” the past in comics.

6 Responses to “Worth Reading”

  1. Fred Chamberlain Says:

    The illusion of change without any significant real change has appeared to be a fine line that the two companies have walked for years. with Marvel’s drastic change in the Marvel Universe, along with the horribly mischaracterized figures that they have touted over the past few years and the glaring flash over logical progression of Civil War, I’m nearly at my wits end with their titles….. and Spidey is my favorite character too *sigh*. No respect for the history of their characters from my perspective anyways.

    I was also reminded of my favorite artist when I read Grant’s column. Ross Andru blew my mind as a kid. I am stunned that so many fans don’t have a clue as to who he is or what he did for the Spidey mythos, muchless for the representation of maniacal facial expressions in comics!

  2. Charles Bryan Says:

    Not a whole lot to disagree with — heck, we’ve even seen some of that in this blog with the reactions to the coming Dr. Fate.

    It all depends on the quality of the change in a comics title, whether there’s a good rationale for the change, whether there’s a logical (or at least credible) flow to the change.

    For example, Green Arrow became much more fun when he went from being another millionaire with a taste for adventure to a leftist with a grudge. Granted, that aspect of the character has been handled better by some than others, but it as much better than what Oliver Queen was before.

    Tony Stark becoming King of the Marvel Superheroes? Ehh, not so much.

    And what Grant has to say about the treatment of past creators sadly couldn’t be more accurate.

  3. Bob Kennedy Says:

    My read of the column is that the big two are bad on the one hand for making permanent changes and equally bad on the other for making changes that will be unmade easily within two years. Not sure what either company could do to escape Grant’s ire.

    Frankly, I think there’s an opportunity here to shift the paradigm away from masked vigilantes with secret identities and underwear outside their pants. Freed of the 70-year tradition of “Luthor found out my secret identity,” we could see a renaissance of new types of leading characters and stories.

    And ponies could fly into my yard. A boy can dream, can’t he?

  4. Pamela Jo Says:

    Is this the same Steve Gerber that used to frequent the saloon in bvh? If so, are you going to my niece;s fashion show tomorrow, or are you actually in LV?

  5. A.L. Baroza Says:

    Bob: the paradigm is shifting. It’s called manga. The thing is, not everyone is shifting along with the paradigm…

  6. elias_A Says:

    I don’t know. Certainly completely restarting the DC universe would give a lot of interesting possibilities, especially for important characters like Batman or Superman.

    However, for less popular, newer characters whose story you want to see continued, like for me the current Batgirl, it would probably mean that they are forgotten and replaced.

    So I guess it depends if you feel a characters story is not over yet, or at least not in the stage where it always repeats itself.