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Another overdue post – June’s MKE Comicbook had a lower attendance than normal, but as ever, our discussion was good and comicbook referrals were plentiful!
So, tonight’s topic was “retcons and reboots” – those attempts by publishers to reinvigorate a title by re-starting it (a reboot) or to explain away some bad plot decisions (a retcon – “retroactive continuity”). Besides discussing these two topics, Jeffrey, Shawn, and I also had a chat about historically-based graphic novels/movies, as those gentlemen are both history-buffs!
Mentioned were: the movies “The Wind Rises” and “The Emperor“; the novel “Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency“; the graphic-novels “Harlem Hell-Fighters“, and “Terrorist.”
On topic for the night, Shawn mentioned Brian Azzarello’s recent run on Wonder Woman as having some retcon-ness that was rather disappointing. “He basically made the Amazons, this “perfect society” into rapists and murderers.”
Shawn thought the current Old Man Logan by Brian Michael Bendis and Andrea Sorrentino was an excellent reboot of Wolverine, and he particularly was loving the artwork!
“Starlord: Worlds On The Brink“, was not a retcon or reboot, was in fact, a reprinting of classic 1970s Starlord tales. Shawn enjoyed that book a lot, as Starlord is basically “the “cool guy who’s cool because he has a great car”. 🙂
Shawn has also been enjoying DC’s reboots of Justice League (really enjoying the banter between Batman and Green Lantern, and the “upping” of Aquaman’s abilities) and Blue Beetle (taking a classic DC character and making a neat, fun new take with a young Latino taking on the role of Blue Beetle).
I brought a few X-books for the topic, and one Valiant title. The X-book that has seemed to go through the most successful reboots has been X-Factor. It’s original incarnation was an example of a reboot and a major retcon. The first issue of X-Factor, featuring the original five Uncanny X-men also featured a return-to-life of Jean Grey (a character whose many deaths/rebirths has become a trope of X-books). After a long run, the line-up of characters changed, and X-Factor became government-sponsored heroes. Later the book was relaunched, with the characters now becoming private investigators, specializing in super-power-related crime cases. And now, in the past two years, X-Factor has relaunched AGAIN, this time with the characters as corporate-sponsored superheroes! What has made the book pretty remarkable is that the one constant through nearly all these transformations has been the writer – Peter David – who has been the writer since that 2nd incarnation.
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The next X-book I mentioned was “Cable” – who has been in “New Mutants”, “X-Force”, “Cable and Deadpool”, “Cable”, “Soldier X”, and back to “Cable.” The character has gone through so many character re-boots that the character should have whiplash – he’s been a “hero from the future”, a tough-as-nails military leader, a baby, a baby-sitter, a straight-man to Deadpool’s hilarity, a soldier seeking peace, a man on the run through time and space, and now he’s back to just being a tough guy again. Personally, I found his “soldier seeking peace” era to be the most interesting.
One other reboot I mentioned was the “odd couple” of Valiant’s “Archer and Armstrong“, a pair of globe-trotting adventurers. At the meet-up, I was pretty sure that the original incarnation, by Barry Windsor-Smith was the superior, but now I’m doubting myself and think I need to give Fred Van Lente‘s reboot a re-read!
