Have you had more than one beer in you, yet? I'm waiting for that second rant about DC bringing back the most boring ass characters ever to exist because Geoff Johns has decided to cripple his storytelling skills because he read a lot of Barry Allen and Hal Jordan comics as a kid.
God, yes, it would have been terrible to return Babs to Batgirl. I don't really much like Oracle as a person, but I love the character . . . sufficiently so that if I ever got the chance to write Bat comics that, well, Oracle would definitely be involved, shall we say. Yeah, as Batgirl Babs was the sidekick's sidekick. As Oracle, she's a might info-warrior. (But I love John Ostrander enough he can have my kids.)
I also got done reading The Racial Politics of Regressive Storytelling and . . . that . . . I've been feeling that, too. Watching interesting non-Eurotrash characters being edged out for Mighty Whitey. Do we really want to go back to the Bad Old Days with self-assured idiots just always knowing what to do? I don't.
When Blackest Night started up last fall, I noted that, after two years of working in a comics shop, it was the one thing that was keeping me interested in superhero comics.
Well, it's over now, and, um, guess what?
They've done their best to roll things back to the Pre-Crisis Status Quo, but ...
Like I said in the link, Alan Moore didn't fridge Barbara Gordon at random, and he certainly didn't do it to spit in the face of a popular character -- because she wasn't.
Barry Allen? Same thing. Everyone remembers the spectacular heroic exit that Wolfman and Perez gave him in Crisis. Nobody remembers that his book had gotten canceled months before, and not to "pave the way" for the Big Event. Nobody remembers the years of tedium that were the last few years of his book.
Ray Palmer wasn't even that popular, and as for Happy Hal -- I spent ten years saying that if all the people who clamored for Hal's return had actually bought his book, it wouldn't have been getting constantly canceled and retooled through the '80s and early '90s
( ... )
Read your post, and the linked web page. And after a couple of minutes, I had a flash.... Could they be doing this 'devolution' as a way to make the inevitable movies of these characters more popular?
DING DING DING DING!athelindMay 13 2010, 05:59:46 UTC
That's not a bad assumption, but so much of this has been writer-level rather than mandated from On High, and the writers themselves admit to being geeky fanboys. The last couple of years of Justice League, for example, have been a succession of writers undoing the last guy's work so they can showcase their OWN favorite Leaguers -- and the line-ups they choose tend to coincide with specific periods of the JLA comic.
Re: DING DING DING DING!scarfmanMay 13 2010, 13:03:40 UTC
The last couple of years of Justice League, for example, have been a succession of writers undoing the last guy's work so they can showcase their OWN favorite Leaguers -- and the line-ups they choose tend to coincide with specific periods of the JLA comic. I liked it when Morrison did that ten or twelve years ago, but that's because I'm a Bronze Age fan who bought JLA when I was a kid because (not realizing there were two major superhero comics houses) I thought it was everyone important in the same place. I loved it when Morrison rolled it back to the original seven, but didn't keep up with it past Rock of Ages. Any rollback to a JLA from later than whenever Aquaman disbanded the League, I'm happy to have missed.
Re: DING DING DING DING!athelindMay 13 2010, 15:52:46 UTC
It's mostly been a back-and-forth between the fans of the Silver Age League and the fans of the Satellite League, with a few contributions from a DCAU writer or two.
Sigh. Dwayne MacDuffie writes the best superhero cartoons ever, and handles his own creations with aplomb, but his stint on Justice League of America meandered around aimlessly until he got to do a wholly-gratuitous story arc bringing his Milestone characters into the DCU proper, only not quite.
I'm still not much for storytelling in a traditional prose narrative, but I think I should give some serious thought to web-publishing my legacy2020 background material as a series of essays, or in something like a Wikipedia format, for no reason other than People Might Enjoy It.
But if all you have is a bunch of people standing around, doing nothing, you have Serious Literature, and an excellent chance to win the Pulitzer Prize.
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Until then, you'll have to settle for The Short Version.
You may also enjoy a rant about why turning Barbara Gordon back into Batgirl would be a wretched idea.
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I also got done reading The Racial Politics of Regressive Storytelling and . . . that . . . I've been feeling that, too. Watching interesting non-Eurotrash characters being edged out for Mighty Whitey. Do we really want to go back to the Bad Old Days with self-assured idiots just always knowing what to do? I don't.
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Well, it's over now, and, um, guess what?
They've done their best to roll things back to the Pre-Crisis Status Quo, but ...
Like I said in the link, Alan Moore didn't fridge Barbara Gordon at random, and he certainly didn't do it to spit in the face of a popular character -- because she wasn't.
Barry Allen? Same thing. Everyone remembers the spectacular heroic exit that Wolfman and Perez gave him in Crisis. Nobody remembers that his book had gotten canceled months before, and not to "pave the way" for the Big Event. Nobody remembers the years of tedium that were the last few years of his book.
Ray Palmer wasn't even that popular, and as for Happy Hal -- I spent ten years saying that if all the people who clamored for Hal's return had actually bought his book, it wouldn't have been getting constantly canceled and retooled through the '80s and early '90s ( ... )
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The last couple of years of Justice League, for example, have been a succession of writers undoing the last guy's work so they can showcase their OWN favorite Leaguers -- and the line-ups they choose tend to coincide with specific periods of the JLA comic.
I liked it when Morrison did that ten or twelve years ago, but that's because I'm a Bronze Age fan who bought JLA when I was a kid because (not realizing there were two major superhero comics houses) I thought it was everyone important in the same place. I loved it when Morrison rolled it back to the original seven, but didn't keep up with it past Rock of Ages. Any rollback to a JLA from later than whenever Aquaman disbanded the League, I'm happy to have missed.
Reply
Sigh. Dwayne MacDuffie writes the best superhero cartoons ever, and handles his own creations with aplomb, but his stint on Justice League of America meandered around aimlessly until he got to do a wholly-gratuitous story arc bringing his Milestone characters into the DCU proper, only not quite.
I'm still not much for storytelling in a traditional prose narrative, but I think I should give some serious thought to web-publishing my legacy2020 background material as a series of essays, or in something like a Wikipedia format, for no reason other than People Might Enjoy It.
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