Oh the lulz with the DCnU
By
Arcanaville,
Posted on: 2011-10-03 17:51 in Comic and Hero-Villain Culture
Wait... what?
I don't think that works.
Comrade Smersh, KGB Special Section 8 50 Inv/Fire, Fire/Rad, BS/WP, SD/SS, AR/EM
Other 50s: Plant/Thorn, Bots/Traps, DB/SR, MA/Regen, Rad/Dark - All on Virtue.
-Don't just rebel, build a better world, comrade! At this point, they should just cancel everything and restart making the DCAU canonical.
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In one little corner of the universe, there's nothing more irritating than a misfile...
(Please support the best webcomic about a cosmic universal realignment by impaired angelic interference resulting in identity crisis angst. Or I release the pigmy water thieves.)
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Neither does Mephisto negating the Spiderman marriage. |
Originally Posted by Smersh
Wait... what?
I don't think that works. |
Marvel and DC have completely lost it.
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Right now, Marvel seems to be doing a better job of picking up the pieces. I never thought I'd say that only, oh, five or six years ago, but such is the current whim of the Great Magnet.
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Originally Posted by Nericus
Marvel and DC have completely lost it.
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Dude... don't think about it. You just tweak your brain for days if you do...
Let's stat with Tim drake's canon and his first major event...just for the lolz.
Tim drake's first major event was Knight Saga. Did it happen? Apparently. Any problems? Besides it taking place over a year, not really.
Next up is No Man's Land... We have spoiler missing thus Catwoman not working with her. We have Huntress missing thus no Batgirl II. We have a changed Harley thus her actions in messing with Joker are no longer there. We have a less friendly Superman so his actions are missing. We have a compressed time line so no yea for that...And it's at this time Tim Drake was off with Young Justice...or rather since Young Justice didn't exist, where was he then? Did he just not be Robin while he wasn't in Gotham or was he in Gotham more? Or what?
Then we have Cassandra Cain coming about, but since Helena hasn't shown up even if Cassandra did she was never Batgirl and she was never adopted by Bruce, nor was she ever attracted to Suprboy because Superboy didn't exist at that time and She was never drugged or learned to speak and Tim never moved to BludHaven with along with her and even if Cass did exist since she was never Batgirl, Stephanie would never have been Batgirl...but more importantly because Oracle never existed she never assisted her father so Gordon should be dead now because Babs never hired cassandra as an assistant...
Oh and then we have War Games where Tim's school never gets shot up and Stephanie doesn't pull the file cuz it doesn't exist and even if it did it revolves around Oracle so since oracle doesn't exist war games could never happen thus Tim never returned to being Robin...
If Oracle never existed then Darkseid's Unternet would have been successful, but it wasn't and she didn't and since Final Crisis didn't happen Bruce didn't take a rip through time nor did it require tim to figure out the clues and all of Red Robin...doesn't exist... because it focuses on Bruce being lost in time and the Unternet...
And since war games never happened stephanie never died and since she never died Bruce never understood how pushing away people is just as dangerous as embracing them and since he never went through time and never had to deal with the unternet nor had Oracle figure it out then Bruce never would have had the impetous to think that he needed others nor the idea for the Internet 3.0 that Batman inc uses...
Of course if Oracle never occurred Calculator would have taken over everything in several books, but more importantly Wendy wouldn't have been paralyzed, and her brother wouldn't have been called nor the titans towers trashed...oh but wait...that never happened either...
Another thing... If Identity crisis never happened Tim's parents are still alive and thus he isn't adopted by Bruce either... and thus any Ra's al Ghul story with Tim in it didn't happen and any the last time we saw Azrael that didn't happen either as one of the reasons Tim says he lost faith is due to losing his parents... and also since that didn't happen parts of Blackest night didn't happen either...
Basically what I'm saying is if you take Tim Drake and you remove all the components that we know didn't happen...which includes the entire run of Young Justice and last Teen Titans run and his Red Robin run...even though they are pretending some how that all happened in someway it didn't and without it along with not having several of those other major events the entire character just falls apart...
I'm pretty sure you can do this with every character, but at least they're not saying those characters are untouched.
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In particular, that aforementioned bit about Jason Todd. If he was dead, then rezzed, but there's no longer Superboy Prime throwing a hissy fit, then what rezzed him?
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Originally Posted by Smersh
Wait... what?
I don't think that works. |
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Oh yeah I forgot about that... What the hell does Superboy get mad at in the first place then? |
Originally Posted by Dark One
In particular, that aforementioned bit about Jason Todd. If he was dead, then rezzed, but there's no longer Superboy Prime throwing a hissy fit, then what rezzed him?
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Superboy-Prime is mad at Superboy living "his" life... Superboy doesn't exist so no smashy smashy.
There are times when I truly, truly miss collecting comics.
Then there are times like this.
Est sularis oth Mithas
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Look on the bright side...there's an absolute ton of backstories that you can collect. Plus, you have definitive endpoints for those comics, meaning you can have a full run of comics for a particular title.|
Originally Posted by Arnabas
There are times when I truly, truly miss collecting comics.
Then there are times like this. |
I've recently finished my Cassie Cain Batgirl series and am steadily working on the Birds of Prey. I know that I'll never have an Action Comics #1 (real number one), but I can have a lot of the others.
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What do you think the n in DCnU means?|
Originally Posted by Dark One
Lulz...
All those crisises over the last few years? Ya...they didn't happen. Commence facepalming... Edit - Crud...didn't even realize I was repeating Didio's words.. |
If they keep all the old stuff then it was rather pointless doing a reboot so new readers could jump on board. Of course it doesn't help that some writers aren't playing along and continuing on anyway.
That's pretty much exactly how it always goes though. Every writer thinks 'Well, okay, we're doing something new, but I'm sure I can fit in this' and that's when you should start reaching for your topiary clippers. There's already too much comic stuff written because writers are bereft of ideas and are instead trying to produce to marketing notions, and then you get the problem of writers trying to impress their 'personality' on their work instead of letting their work speak for them and that's why these days, you have Kevin Smith and the 80s had Alan Moore.
(That's meant to indicate enormous disdain for Kevin Smith, by the way.)
Fire Didio, seriously.
If the confusing mishmash of what's continuity and what's not isn't bad enough already, he has to go and try and sledgehammer it to death with no explanations.
I agree with Arcanaville; the DCAU continuity would be superb in this situation. How can we get Bruce Timm to take over?
S.
Part of Sister Flame's Clickey-Clack Posse
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Except that is the exact opposite of what they are doing.|
Originally Posted by Fanservice
What do you think the n in DCnU means?
If they keep all the old stuff then it was rather pointless doing a reboot so new readers could jump on board. Of course it doesn't help that some writers aren't playing along and continuing on anyway. |
They are resetting the timeline to zero, essentially. While at the same time keeping things that don't make sense in context. Like Jason Todd still being alive. Combined with the number of Robins and all the mishmash of other stuff like The Killing Joke still having happened, but jettisoning Steph Brown and Cassie Cain.
If you are going to start from zero, then start from zero. Start with Bruce just becoming Bats, Hal Jordan just getting the Ring, Clark just starting out, Diana just coming off of Paradise Island, etc. Don't try to confuse people by saying it's a "fresh" start, but keeping cherry-picked parts of history that don't make sense without other parts of history.
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They're starting In Media Res though. Some comics show off the past a bit, like Action Comics. Some start off at the "Five years later" point the timeline is at now.|
Originally Posted by Dark One
Except that is the exact opposite of what they are doing.
They are resetting the timeline to zero, essentially. While at the same time keeping things that don't make sense in context. Like Jason Todd still being alive. Combined with the number of Robins and all the mishmash of other stuff like The Killing Joke still having happened, but jettisoning Steph Brown and Cassie Cain. If you are going to start from zero, then start from zero. Start with Bruce just becoming Bats, Hal Jordan just getting the Ring, Clark just starting out, Diana just coming off of Paradise Island, etc. Don't try to confuse people by saying it's a "fresh" start, but keeping cherry-picked parts of history that don't make sense without other parts of history. |
They'll no doubt do the origin stories eventually, as well as explain all the other things that don't fit the old world. Doing the origin stories for the first comic for all of them would have been boring because frankly everyone, new and old, pretty much knows how Batman and Superman came to be or who Robin is (Kinda)
You'll note the comics mainly getting origin stories are the ones who people just aren't familiar with.
Stephanie Brown may be yet to come (And good for her, because she deserved better), because the whole point of changing things is they're allowed to change things. Some events have gone away, some have stayed. It'll take a while to work out which, but for new people this isn't a problem.
Well unless they're reading Green Lantern. But that's tough luck there.
The DCAU succeeded precisely because it was less subject to the demands of marketing (it had its crossovers, but not every summer) and the whims of too many cooks than the monthly comics ever can be. And even it wasn't completely immune - consider "the Bat Embargo", which kept certain characters (for which other producers might, at some point, have plans) out of later series, and the contradictions and conflicting views that started to creep in later (e.g., the fate(s) of Victor Fries).
An Adaption Distillation can be excellent, but it must stand on its own if it is to remain so. If you tried to make, say, "The New Frontier" the basis for a new continuity, eventually it would be just as ugly and messed-up as the last one. And that's why Crises don't really work - at least not as a permanent fix. (Mostly they're just an excuse for someone else to be able to make their idea The Definitive Story.)
My characters at Virtueverse
Faces of the City
I don't see a problem. It's a reboot, so anything before issue #1 doesn't matter. If it's brought up as having happened in Issue #1 or later, then it's canon. Until then, it didn't happen.
Don't see why that's hard to grasp. I also don't see why it's a bad thing. All those great (and bad) stories that we've read up until now are still there for us to enjoy again. It's just that those stories are not continuing any further.
For folks that wanted more of those stories, and are disappointed that they've ended, I can sympathize. But those stories don't have any bearing on what's being written now. Judge what is being written now on its own merits (or lack thereof). I'm not saying some of it (maybe most?) isn't crap. I know at least a couple of the #1 books I read were crap. But it wasn't because they ignored the past, it was because they were poorly written. And some of the #1 books I read so far have been good, and again it wasn't because of the past. It was because they were well written.
@Quasadu
"We must prepare for DOOM and hope for FREEM." - SirFrederick
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Then it's not a "fresh start" is it? If you are keeping cherry-picked parts of the last 20-30 years, but forgetting that some of those parts simply don't work without the other bits, then it's not exactly conducive to making people not go, "Huh?".|
Originally Posted by Fanservice
Some events have gone away, some have stayed. It'll take a while to work out which, but for new people this isn't a problem.
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Mention the names Batman and Robin. What do people, even those who don't read comics, think? Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson. They are ingrained in the popular consciousness. Who is Robin now? Tim Drake? Damian Psychopath? Weeble Bronlix? Oh, there's been four different Robins in five years? Bruce must go through 'em like candy. It's not how you start off a "fresh start".
You especially don't placate your older crowd by saying that all your favorite stories, like Killing Joke, still happened, but then handwave away the consequences of those stories.
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You start by accepting what it's saying. There's been four robins in five years. How long did each last? We don't know yet, but I imagine it'll come up in time. Five years is a pretty long time, one year for each (And a year for Bruce to find his feet) is still long enough for them to have seriously given it a good go.|
Originally Posted by Dark One
Then it's not a "fresh start" is it? If you are keeping cherry-picked parts of the last 20-30 years, but forgetting that some of those parts simply don't work without the other bits, then it's not exactly conducive to making people not go, "Huh?".
Mention the names Batman and Robin. What do people, even those who don't read comics, think? Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson. They are ingrained in the popular consciousness. Who is Robin now? Tim Drake? Damian Psychopath? Weeble Bronlix? Oh, there's been four different Robins in five years? Bruce must go through 'em like candy. It's not how you start off a "fresh start". |
How do past events work considering all the changes? Well we don't know that yet either, they've only been hinted at so new people know the score. They'll no doubt be explained in more detail as time goes by as well.
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I am perfectly fine with the idea of nothing happened unless it is said in the new continuity. The prob is two running into and creating one big problem...|
Originally Posted by Quasadu
I don't see a problem. It's a reboot, so anything before issue #1 doesn't matter. If it's brought up as having happened in Issue #1 or later, then it's canon. Until then, it didn't happen.
Don't see why that's hard to grasp. I also don't see why it's a bad thing. All those great (and bad) stories that we've read up until now are still there for us to enjoy again. It's just that those stories are not continuing any further. For folks that wanted more of those stories, and are disappointed that they've ended, I can sympathize. But those stories don't have any bearing on what's being written now. Judge what is being written now on its own merits (or lack thereof). I'm not saying some of it (maybe most?) isn't crap. I know at least a couple of the #1 books I read were crap. But it wasn't because they ignored the past, it was because they were poorly written. And some of the #1 books I read so far have been good, and again it wasn't because of the past. It was because they were well written. |
Taking out stories that made the rest work is creates holes in the character and we're left asking well if that's not the case how did x come about And tie that in with the fact that DCU stories were largely serial... meaning that one story connects with the one before it and is reliant upon it... then when you change one thing a whole lot of cards fall
For example, with Tim Drake.
Assuming all the changes Tim Drake should have stopped being Robin and then never came back and his parents should still be alive... Erasing every title he appears in after just before War Games...
Likewise without the Crisis you don't have 52, without 52 you don't have Jason picking up the Red Robin suit, without that you can't have Tim picking it up even if he came back to being Robin for a different reason.
So not only are you getting massive collapse you have multiple vectors of collapse.
The reason the whole "it didn't happen less it was said" worked before is because pre-1980 most comics weren't serials and took place in several different cannons thus if you said X happened or didn't happen it only meant that that particular book happened and had no implications for most other books
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Unless they invent a different reason. Which they probably will!
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Originally Posted by Durakken
For example, with Tim Drake.
Assuming all the changes Tim Drake should have stopped being Robin and then never came back and his parents should still be alive... Erasing every title he appears in after just before War Games... Likewise without the Crisis you don't have 52, without 52 you don't have Jason picking up the Red Robin suit, without that you can't have Tim picking it up even if he came back to being Robin for a different reason. |
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But all the stuff you said relies on clinging to stuff that happened before the new Issue #1's. If you take the Issue #1's on their own merits, with no preconceived notions about who these people are and where they come from, then you still end up with question marks about their backstory, but you don't have contradictions. You just have gaps in your knowledge as a reader. The contradictions only start to come in when you bring in history from the old universe, which is not relevant to the new universe. |
Originally Posted by Durakken
I am perfectly fine with the idea of nothing happened unless it is said in the new continuity. The prob is two running into and creating one big problem...
Taking out stories that made the rest work is creates holes in the character and we're left asking well if that's not the case how did x come about And tie that in with the fact that DCU stories were largely serial... meaning that one story connects with the one before it and is reliant upon it... then when you change one thing a whole lot of cards fall For example, with Tim Drake. Assuming all the changes Tim Drake should have stopped being Robin and then never came back and his parents should still be alive... Erasing every title he appears in after just before War Games... Likewise without the Crisis you don't have 52, without 52 you don't have Jason picking up the Red Robin suit, without that you can't have Tim picking it up even if he came back to being Robin for a different reason. So not only are you getting massive collapse you have multiple vectors of collapse. The reason the whole "it didn't happen less it was said" worked before is because pre-1980 most comics weren't serials and took place in several different cannons thus if you said X happened or didn't happen it only meant that that particular book happened and had no implications for most other books |
That said, I'm sure the contradictions will start to crop up quickly enough on their own, because this is comics. But we don't need to go looking for contradictions with past continuity because there is no past continuity.
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Originally Posted by Fanservice
Unless they invent a different reason. Which they probably will!
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@Quasadu
"We must prepare for DOOM and hope for FREEM." - SirFrederick
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canon isn't just what is written in the comics, but also what is officially stated as such. Tim Drake is a perfect example because his history should be relatively unscathed by everything said but as we see he's completely destroyed by it.|
Originally Posted by Quasadu
But all the stuff you said relies on clinging to stuff that happened before the new Issue #1's. If you take the Issue #1's on their own merits, with no preconceived notions about who these people are and where they come from, then you still end up with question marks about their backstory, but you don't have contradictions. You just have gaps in your knowledge as a reader. The contradictions only start to come in when you bring in history from the old universe, which is not relevant to the new universe.
That said, I'm sure the contradictions will start to crop up quickly enough on their own, because this is comics. But we don't need to go looking for contradictions with past continuity because there is no past continuity. |
If they were to just go this is a reboot and nothing you knew is right any more then yes I could go with what you are saying, but that isn't the case
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Five years is NOT a long time. Especially considering the amount of work and training that goes into a Robin. A year is barely getting to the point where they are finally starting to click as a team.|
Originally Posted by Fanservice
You start by accepting what it's saying. There's been four robins in five years. How long did each last? We don't know yet, but I imagine it'll come up in time. Five years is a pretty long time, one year for each (And a year for Bruce to find his feet) is still long enough for them to have seriously given it a good go.
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| How do past events work considering all the changes? Well we don't know that yet either, they've only been hinted at so new people know the score. They'll no doubt be explained in more detail as time goes by as well. |
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Well the sensible thing to do would be to assume his history is different wouldn't it?
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Originally Posted by Durakken
canon isn't just what is written in the comics, but also what is officially stated as such. Tim Drake is a perfect example because his history should be relatively unscathed by everything said but as we see he's completely destroyed by it.
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Lulz...
All those crisises over the last few years? Ya...they didn't happen.
Commence facepalming...
Edit - Crud...didn't even realize I was repeating Didio's words..