Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Why Previous Reboots Failed

And I'm referring to general DCU reboots which affect the Legion. I know there are people who like the reboot or threeboot Legion but that's not what I'm talking about:

The main problem with reboots is that it's not possible or wise to reboot absolutely everything. But if you don't, they all interfere with each other.

Rebooting one title can affect another title (and it's worse yet if the first title has a high profile creator who always gets his way).

It's never clear which events have happened and which have not, and it's quite easy for a reboot to pepper a title with inconsistencies that are minor individually but which add up to a mess. It means that every time someone writes a flashback there's another opportunity for mistakes, and inevitably this leads to a lot of mistakes.

Having characters with uncertain histories also means the reader can never really understand what makes the character tick. This includes cases where the writers just never talk about the messed-up history--a character's history informs the present, and leaving a blank spot is just as bad as getting it wrong. And it's especially bad when what gets retconned away is a major, character-defining moment and the character still acts the same.

Reboots which rewrite an origin can mess things up if the initial writer puts things in for shock value or just because it's faddish to write comics that way, and forces later writers either to keep it in forever, or take it out, thus causing another of the problems that reboots are meant to solve in the first place.

In-universe reboots lead to problems when the writers don't recognize that the reboot, being in-universe, has some limits (why doesn't Dr. Strange notice One More Day? Isn't Star Trek: Enterprise still in continuity after the Star Trek reboot?)

Anything else?

I think you have it covered, Ken.

The one thing I would argue is that Reboot alone isn't a big issue, unless you link it with Continuity. It could be a much simpler and cleaner task for DC to take ALL the titles and characters and make a Reboot at the same time, reconfiguring everything at once in an orderly fashion.

The problem with this is a large number of fans seem to want the continuity and tradition and have a hard time ignoring inconsistencies or flat out change from what they have become accustom to.

The early comics didn't really have this issue because they were priced and produced as throw-aways. Only when comics became collected was continuity a concern (to the reader, at least).

In the Star Trek Movie reboot, I thought an entire story could have been told without the presence of the 'Old Spock' and would have been better for it, but there was a perceived need to the viewers for a 'passing of the baton' of one series to the next.

Not even mention the temptation of "redoing" classic storylines for the contemporary reader...

Which is exactly what we have with the current version of the Legion. The big question now is: Are they going to even try to fix it, or are they throwing the baby out with the bathwater yet again?

If/when they reboot the Legion again, I am finished for good. I'll never read another DC title in my life and I'll never have anything to do with the Legion again. It is too hard, I won't do it.
Same goes for if they keep the current version of the Legion but don't start answering the thousands of unanswered questions reguarding the similarities and differences to the Pre-Crisis Legion... and SOON. Too confusing, too anoying. Won't bother to try any more.

Except it's a matter of degree. A DCU-wide reboot will make things drastically worse unless we are very lucky.

Not saying you are wrong but this is something I have never really understood.

When reading the book I will be thinking is the art and writing good, did I enjoy the story and if someone acted wildly out of character were there reasons or hints of reasons why this happened.

I am not sure I have ever sat there thinking how this ties up with a story produced twenty+ years and several redesigns ago as it seems unrealistic to expect everything to match perfectly or for them to take time away from telling new stories to explain how it all fits together.

Even if they reboot the team again and I do not believe they will to any great extent we can still be fairly sure that the founders will be the same, they will still be inspired by the exploits of Superman/boy, Garth and Imra will still be a couple and the team will still be made up of teenagers from around the galaxy who band together to fight villainy and injustice.

Surely these are the things that make the Legion what we all know & love and should a costume, origin or race change here or there does it really matter?

Just train of thought here...

The reason that other reboots have failed is that the creators are not willing to go for it. They want to hold onto the parts that they like, and get rid of the stuff that they do not like.

While I believe that there were a lot of hands in the DC pot back with the first crisis, I understand that Marv wanted to basiccally do what they are doing now...only taken to the extreme. Literally start eerything over. The powers that be said no, and so you had a Superman aht was different, and a Batman that was not very different at all. Wonder Woman all of a sudden no longer existed to give the JLA a female member, so Black Canary is shoehorned in. Superman was never Superboy...so the LEgion spiraled into a true mess.

Then they tried the "no real reason for it reboots...Make Atom a teenager to reset everything...but not really...trick. That didn't stick.

Then there was the Doom Patrol reboot...which affected Beast Boy/Changeling and a whole slew of others on their periphery.

The thing is...DC cnnot win. Not really. If they were to do the big reboot and start over...people reding them for yers would be upset. If they do what they 're doing...who decides wht styed in continuity nd wht did not. nd did we really need Jim Lee to help design all the new costumes. I think costumes re more about individulity than a cohecsivelook...unless you're talking about something like what they did with the Legion look during the reboot, where there was a theme to the uniforms, but allowed for some of the original flavor to seep through as needed.

The other thing would be for them to do nothing. That in and of itself has not been working for them...so they felt that they had to try something. Marvel started out strong with their Ultimate line...but that even got derailed over time into a huge mess.

Why do reboots fail...because they are not really rebooting anything at all, they are just reimagining the same old stuff over and over again.

This has been the ramblings of someone that is working on his typing skills...thank you for participating.

There seems to be two sides to this.

First, by continually using the same character, and attempting to keep them 'genuine,' even after forty or fifty years, there is a point where every possible story that could be told with that character, *has* been told, requiring either the character themself to change to the point of aggravating fans, or the world that they exist within has to be changed to such an extent that it's unrecognizable, which, since 'Gotham' is as much a 'character' as Batman is, is equally distressing to the long-term fan.

Secondly, when stories *do* resonate (Judas Contract / Eyes of Tara Markov, for instance), they tend to get recycled, not necessarily with the same team, but across the product line, until you reach the point of series like Avengers Academy, where the writers have stated up front that someone is going to 'be the Tara.' When every team has someone flipping out and 'going Dark Phoenix,' (like Raven or the Scarlet Witch or friggin' Willow Rosenberg) it just leads to inevitable comparisons to the more ground-breaking appearance of this 'female character can't handle powers and must die' storyline.

I've long wished that not only could Crisis on Infinite Earths not have happened, but that it could happen in reverse, and different characters be placed into different universes.

Batman and the Birds of Prey and the various 'street-level' heroes work so much better if Batman doesn't have a JLA teleporter on his belt, and nobody ever has to question why the fifty different heroes she knows with the technology / magic / powers to heal her haven't helped Oracle get out of that chair.

The old JLA / JSA teamup stories showcase how the heroes of different worlds could be brought together, when a story calls for it, and the rest of the time, the Marvel family and the Freedom Fighters and Batman & friends and the House of El can be on different Earths, with minimal concern for how an earthquake could devastate Gotham for *years* when Superman could fix it in *minutes.*

And, IMO, the notion of 21st century 'events' (like the Laurel Kent - Manhunter nonsense) messing with 31st century LSH stories is just absurd.

What Set said. Crisis was DC's biggest mistake. DC themselves finally realized that and brought back multiple earths.

That said, I'm about 75% sure that a bulk of these new titles are going to be taking place on some of the 52 earths out there now that there is a multiverse of a sort back on the table.

Are we talking "failure" here in the artistic/story sense or "failure" in the commercial sense?

At this point, I've sampled at least some of every reboot we've had (including 5YG, if that counts) and I don't count any of them as outright creative failures. Yes, they had some flaws, but every creative work has flaws and there's no such thing as a story and/or characters that can be all things to all people.

I still think that much of the failure lies at the feet of bad packaging, bad pricing, bad marketing and bad commercial decisions. Not to mention excessive greed. Not every book out there should even need to reap astronomical sales for a company to count itself profitable.

Also, companies need to learn that 20 million in profits is fine... so need to be greedy for 25 million...

But... but, MLLASH, our CEO needs to have a new <strike>boot</strike> boat EVERY YEAR!! Or else all the other CEOs will laugh at him/her!

In my mind, what I think he's talking about is that none of the "reboot/reimagining/reinventions" ever seem to really stick around for long. There are always exceptions, but for the most part...given a few months...or even a decade...they always seem to revert back to the status quo. Supermans reboot in the 80's lasted a long time...but it too was eventually chipped away at until they finally abandoned Byrnes stuff pretty much altogether.

Creators seem to push things back towards the middle of the road.

Here's a perfect example. Swamp Thing. Alan Moore recreated the character while loosing nothing that had really come before (not that there was that much) and they have now finally brought it around full circle it seems. I did not read the story, but everything I have heard seems to indicate that.

There seems to be no real long term forward thinking...instead, for every step forward, they eventually take a step back until they see that they need to "move foprward" again because sales are slumping.

Again, this is just what I see as a failure in this arena.

Dev, I'd count that less as failure on the part of whoever created the changes then. The failure lies with the people who request and promote these changes but then lack the wherewithal to actually see them through over the long term.

Tell me about it, child... I hate when my yacht is out of date

I can give you that in most cases maybe...but it still remains a failure overall.

Thing is...Geoff Johns at DC has an obvious love for the Silver Age characters...thus the push to get them back, and now deage them enough to make them relevant again (I'm being snarky here...)

Over at Marvel, you have Bendis who turned the Avengers into a street level team for a while...because those are the characters he writes well. I liked his Daredevil stuff, and enjoyed his first issue of Moon Knight...but he does not belong on a title like the Avengers. He just does not cut it...but your mileage may vary.

When DC turned the JLA into a more street level team (The Detroit League anyone?) it was not well received overall, and led to Justice League after the Crisis came along and change...well not everything, but enough to make it more confusing than before...which is theexact opposite of what it was supposed to do. Whether you liked the JL/JLI/JLA/JLEera, it had some powerhouses on the roster.

Some say 'good story telling' is more important than 'continuity' and some say that 'continuity' is more important than 'good story telling'.
I say that both are essential for an ongoing series (one shots and Else Worlds are an entirely different thing). Without a stable history to anchor it, a story is inheirently flawed because in the long run it will not matter. Without good writing (both skilled and adventurous) it is doomed because nobody cares about the characters or setting. The problem with the current Legion (and from what I gather, DC Comics in general) is that it has niether.
And why?
Because they are sooooo fond of certain big name characters that they too afraid to let them go even though their time has passed. It is time for Superman, Batman, Flash, etc. to retire (and stay retired) or DIE (and STAY DEAD). The constant de-aging or bringing back to life of characters is sickening (almost as sickening as the wholesale slaughter of second, third and fourth tier characters that is oh so popular for shock value in comics these days or the ocasional 'big event' death of a first tier character that you know will be back as soon as the next big event rolls around). I am sick and tired of the whole thing. I want to see change in the characters, but I want it to come logically and organicly from the story telling, not forced for shock value or because it is time to make them 'relevant' to the current generation.... You know what? If the writers were/are doing their jobs, then it is already relevant. Plus, they wouldn't lose a ton of older readers because of sudden (often silly) changes to make it 'New and Exciting' and give a 'Jumping On Point for New Readers'.
But they are probablely never going to figure that out. And I am tired of the whole thing. Comics used to be fun. They aren't any more and largely haven't been for .... years? decades? Long enough that I sometimes can not even remember when they were fun as a whole.
Sorry to rant on like this, but I think it has helped me understand something. I don't enjoy what super-heroe comics have become. I haven't enjoyed them for some time. There is no good reason to expect that I will suddenly feel differently about it. I think the best thing to do is give it up. Thanks for the conversations and I wish you all well.
If a Mod reads this, please lock/delete/whatever my account. If I am not going to read them, I shouldn't be discussing them either.

Lock the door, close the book, blow out the candle.

That's not what I'm talking about. Well, okay, it's a bit of it, but it's not the main problem. Reboots end up making things hopelessly confused. Reboots have tons of side effects. The fact that many reboots don't even last just makes it worse.

And Swamp Thing wasn't a reboot, it was a retcon (of the sort that denies being a retcon because "we didn't change anything").

LSH is already back to the older versions of the characters... and people are worried that the reboot will replace that with something all-new.

It's the other way around, at least for LSH.

I haven't read new comics in years, and have had a better time just talking about them online than reading stuff I wasn't enjoying.

And the best part is you can talk about the ones you liked. However long ago that was.

Shining Son has the right attitude!

[snip]

Is the tendency at Marvel to have more than one version of a team published simultaneously, though? Or am I confused?

Because I wouldn't personally see any harm in there being more than one version of the Legion being published simultaneously, even if one was a mini-series, one a graphic novel, one an ongoing series or twice-yearly "annual," and so on.

I disagree with the premise of the thread. What evidence is there that previous reboots failed? How do we define reboots - as opposed to retcons, relaunches, or alternate versions? How do we define success or failure?

More importantly for me, what do we have to compare it to? DC has been publishing comic books consistently for 75 plus years. That's quite a record for any entertainment endeavor. What entertainment format/franchise has existed for that period of time without some changes in direction, relaunches, new versions, or reboots? If any exist, I can't think of them. The question for me is why do fans insist that reboots/changes have "failed", when there is no example of a comic book endeavor that "succeeded" for 75 years without these types of changes?

I don't believe that Crisis was a mistake at all. It was a beautifully crafted tale and a huge commercial success. DC published 25 years worth of stories in the settings of the "post crisis" Earth. Byrne's "Man of Steel" mini series relaunched Superman in a version that served up fresh and exciting stories. The Perez relaunch of Wonder Woman is arguably the best the character has ever been. JLI had a fun a respectable run.

25 years later, I'm totally open to another fresh start. The return of multiple Earths? Bring 'em on. To everything there is a season. Things certainly got muddied and convoluted in the intervening years, but, for me, that doesn't make Crisis a mistake. I believe things would be even more convoluted and muddy had Crisis not occurred.

Jerry, I'm sure you're DC's dream customer. Trouble is, at this point, I don't think there's enough people like you to keep them afloat in the style which they think they deserve.

At the time Crisis happened, I liked it well enough (except for Kara's death, which mightily pissed me off). But later I just felt like the whole thing was a scam. It didn't really resolve much of anything over the long term, and it put the idea into DC's head that frequent cosmic-level shakeups of its caliber was an easy way for them to make a fast buck.

Really, so long as there's a concept like Elseworlds, I don't understand the constant mania to play Highlander and insist that when it comes to continuities, "there can be only one" in play at a time. It just seems wasteful and foolish to me to play these constant games of sweeping the field clear and then starting all over again.

Especially as the "sweeps" seem to be getting more and more frequent as time goes on...