Getting the Reboot

In an attempt to bring in all new readers, DC Comics recently relaunched their entire mainstream comic book line with all-new first issues featuring rebooted and modernized versions of all their heroes. Controversy has already arisen regarding alterations, or lack thereof, to the previously established continuity. Instead of focusing on the success or failure of DC’s relaunch, I feel an examination of how DC and Marvel, the two biggest mainstream comic book companies, go about modernizing their respective universes would be more engaging.

First off…why the need to reboot at all? 

FIG.1

While Superman and Spider-Man share a level of multimedia success with other fictional characters like James Bond or Sherlock Holmes, superheroes are very unique in that new stories have constantly been produced since their creation, some spanning more than 70 years. Most fictional characters in popular culture always hit what I call the “Age Glass Ceiling,” in that past a certain point these characters will show no further signs of aging. Some characters that started out as teens, such as Peter Parker (Spider-Man) or Dick Grayson (Robin/Nightwing/Batman/Nightwing/Batman/Nightwing), have been allowed to age into their mid-twenties before hitting the age-glass ceiling. Even if one gets married [fig. 1] their union is eventually annulled out of fear that the relationship will have little appeal to younger readers. If a hero has their mantle taken up by their grown up former sidekick, they will eventually return to claim their tights; whether it be only after a few months or 20 long years.  These are more than just characters, they’re Cash Cows. Keeping them young and at the forefront of each company's comic line ensures multimedia interest for years to come. The rise of creator owned work may factor into why neither company has produced a character with massive multimedia appeal since 1974 [fig. 2]. If given the option, why would an artist or writer create a potential multimedia level character for Marvel or DC, when they can just as easily retain the rights themselves?

FIG. 2

So if aging a comic hero is a big no-no, in order to keep a hero relevant something has to give. That give comes in the form of moving time and space around these characters. How each company goes about executing this is where things get really interesting. Each time DC executes a major reboot of their universe, they predominantly create an epic cosmic story that resolves with time and space altered in order to create a “fresher or more cohesive” superhero universe. Did you notice the parentheses? Yet their unwillingness to fully commit to an across the board revamping leaves each reboot feeling half-assed.  When DC rebooted their heroes in 1980’s, they refused to alter anything about their best-selling book at the time (New Teen Titans), leaving a universe full of rejuvenated heroes to co-exist with a generation of their already grown up sidekicks. It’s like hiring a younger actress to play an older actress’s mother…except that has actually successfully been done [fig. 3]. This year DC once again used time altering events to explain the changes to their universe, but what came about is a universe that has de-aged all their characters and implemented changes, anywhere from massive chunks to just tiny bits and pieces, to their rich 80 year history. It’s like if every role on The Soprano’s was recast with younger look alike actors at the start of season 4; which continues the main plot lines from the past season…except that Tony was never married…or had a son. Yes…it’s that half-assed.

FIG.3: The Golden Girls

Marvel on the other hand uses what I’ll call “The Simpsons Method,” in which the heroes of their universe seemingly stay the same age (age-glass-ceiling) while the world around them constantly changes with no explanation in the narrative. During the second season of The Simpson we learned that Homer and Marge fell in love during the 1970’s, which makes chronological sense at the time. Flash-forward 17 seasons and the story of Homer and Marge’s romantic origin was reestablished to the 1990’s, once again making logical sense for viewers at the time. The Simpsons/Marvel comparison doesn’t end there, in that both universes update the era/age/date of their character’s origins, they do so without throwing away their already established histories. Everything that has happened in the Simpsons/Marvel Universe still happened, it’s just that their histories have been compressed and any chronological contradictions are attributed to the point-of-view of the time in which it was produced. When Iron Man debuted in 1963, his origin story was set during the Vietnam War, in the 1990’s it was updated to the first Gulf War, and recently it has been moved up to the war in Afghanistan.

FIG.4: DC's Earth-1 & Earth-2 of the early 1980's

Speaking of war, the way in which DC and Marvel reboot their universes truly stems from how they initially treated their World War II heroes. This dates back to the comic era known as the Golden-Age (1930’s-1955), in which the vast majority of DC’s flagship characters (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman) and Marvel’s Captain America were created.  Green Lantern, The Flash, and other heroes also debuted but these earlier incarnations would not be recognizable to today’s mainstream audiences. The poplar versions of these characters later ushered in the Silver-Age (1956-1970), or what I’ll call the first major companywide reboot. The adventures of the World War II era heroes had been erased from DC’s continuity, so that all new younger versions complete with new costume designs and alter-egos where now behind the masks. Years later, DC changed this by introducing a parallel universe called Earth-2, which consisted of all the company’s previously disregarded heroes from the Golden-Age.  This allowed the new Silver-Age heroes to team up with their Golden-Age counterparts, which always was a really cool treat for readers [fig. 4]. Over the course of the next half-century, status of the Golden-Age heroes has flip-flopped as many times as Dick Grayson’s superhero alter-ego.

FIG.5

When it came time for Marvel to address their Golden-Age heroes, it did the complete opposite and acknowledged its established continuity. When a frozen-in-time Captain America was discovered by the Avengers in 1964, the reason for Cap’s non-aging was attributed to the drug that first gave him his powers: the Super-Soldier Serum. Similar drugs have been used as a means to explain the agelessness of other Marvel heroes including Nick Fury and the Black Widow. Other age defying devices have been established into the core of characters’ origins: Wolverine’s mutant healing factor and Thor being a god.  Characters like Cap and Wolverine are to the Marvel Universe what seemingly ageless black-child-actors were to 80’s family sitcoms [fig. 5].  Captain America’s reintroduction forever anchored the Marvel Universe with a specific temporal point of origins: World War II. No matter what, Steve Rogers/Captain America will always be a World War II hero frozen in time and thawed out decades later by a new generation of heroes. It’s just that the specific time of his rescue is pushed forward each time Marvel compresses their history to make chronological sense.

Now both companies have used each other’s approach to rebooting with similar results. Marvel used supernatural mojo to erase Peter Parker’s longtime marriage to Mary Jane, which is still viewed as a massive creative fubar by many…including me. On the other hand, Grant Morrison’s run on Batman reintroduced much of the character’s blatantly disregarded and sillier history of the 1950’s to an astounding success.

The first rule of improvisational comedy is “always say yes.” Meaning that when a performer joins a sketch they never disregard what has already been established, but instead creatively build from it. If I say “I’m a dentist”, my co-performer should never say “No, you’re not a dentist…you’re a lawyer”, just in order to change the direction for their own benefit. Instead they should add something like “Yes, but no one really respects a dentist who only treats cats” thus building off of what has been established and allowing for new avenues of comedy. In this model Marvel is a master improvisational comedian, while DC brings the sketch to a screeching halt by disregarding its own history solely to further its own creative needs at the time. Marvel’s say “yes” approach also makes more sense financially in that it preserves the relevance of Marvel’s entire back library. A huge part of what makes comic book superheroes so cool is their rich histories. By embracing these histories, instead of simply ignoring them, you give readers a less messy universe filled with rejuvenated characters making the best of their “past lives”. In other words, they may look young, but they have very old souls. That is unless you’re a sexyorange-skinned super-heroine…then you’re just fucked.