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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132335
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| Posted: 17 October 2012 at 8:18am | IP Logged | 1
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The funny thing was, Batman was being constantly "rebooted", but Batfans seemed either to not notice, or not care. The alien-fighting, shape-changing, time-traveling Batman I first "met" in the mid Fifties had little in common with the guy I found in the books when I returned to reading in the early Seventies!
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Matt Hawes
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 16432
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| Posted: 17 October 2012 at 8:21am | IP Logged | 2
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Stephen Robinson wrote:
| ...I've been re-reading some BATMAN comics from the late 1980s and my impression remains that the "reboot/revamp" was not as well-planned as the one in SUPERMAN.... |
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In general, the whole Post-Crisis DC Universe wasn't very well-planned. It seems like the editorial decision was to shake everything up and worry about how it would all settle after the fact. This is why we've seen numerous attempts to "straighten" things out, like "Zero Hour," "Infinite Crisis," "Final Crisis," and now "New 52." Edit: It seems like I always have some typo to edit. Grrr.
Edited by Matt Hawes on 17 October 2012 at 8:21am
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 17 October 2012 at 8:26am | IP Logged | 3
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..I've been re-reading some BATMAN comics from the late 1980s and my impression remains that the "reboot/revamp" was not as well-planned as the one in SUPERMAN....++ In general, the whole Post-Crisis DC Universe wasn't very well-planned. It seems like the editorial decision was to shake everything up and worry about how it would all settle after the fact. This is why we've seen numerous attempts to "straighten" things out, like "Zero Hour," "Infinite Crisis," "Final Crisis," and now "New 52." •• What many seemed to overlook was that my notions about what Superman needed had been percolating in my brain for at least ten years. CRISIS, on the other hand, was only a couple of years in the making -- and I know this, as some of you are aware, because it was originally offered to me, back when it was still planned as a "history" with everything blowing up at the end. If MAN OF STEEL read like a lot of thought had gone into it, it was because a lot of thought HAD gone into it! What followed CRISIS, tho, was basically a swarm of people saying "Well, Byrne got to do it!" Suddenly, every new team saw their mandate as rebooting whatever title they were assigned to -- even if it had been "rebooted" by the previous team.
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Charles Valderrama
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 4721
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| Posted: 17 October 2012 at 11:18am | IP Logged | 4
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Yeah, i believe BATMAN fans have been "programed" to accept different interpretations of the character and really, what fans rejected with JB's SUPERMAN was the 'trimming down' of the character's history/powers -- the stuff i thought were good ideas. Apparently, most fans enjoy continuity that has NO boundaries/limitations.
-C!
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 17 October 2012 at 11:32am | IP Logged | 5
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Yeah, i believe BATMAN fans have been "programed" to accept different interpretations of the character and really, what fans rejected with JB's SUPERMAN was the 'trimming down' of the character's history/powers -- the stuff i thought were good ideas. Apparently, most fans enjoy continuity that has NO boundaries/limitations.•• The strongest sense I got at the time was that the really hardcore Superman fans resented the "leveling of the playing field". These were people who had memorized every comma of existing lore, even, to borrow a phrase from Ned Flanders, the stuff that contradicted the other stuff. They liked being "experts", and, like so many experts, their concern was not for the health of the character, but for protecting the area of their expertise. They hated the fact that suddenly they knew no more about Superman than anybody else at the LCS. (I think I will always remember the fan who wrote in to complain, when the second issue of MAN OF STEEL revealed Lois was an Army brat. This had not been mentioned in the first issue, and the complainer wanted to know how readers were supposed to know this stuff if I didn't tell them! Funny -- I thought I just did!)
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Stephen Churay
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 25 March 2009
Location: United States
Posts: 8369
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| Posted: 17 October 2012 at 1:57pm | IP Logged | 6
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I just remember having trouble getting into a Superman story prior to
Man Of Steel. The Superman I grew up with till that point was reruns
of the George Reeves show and the movies. The MOS displayed the
character who, power wise, was along the lines of the character I
knew.
With YEAR ONE, I was actually dealing with a character I had no
frame of reference for. I enjoyed Year One and DKR, but itmdefinitely
wasn't the character I knew.
Things got worse with other characters. Hawkman's origin became a
mess and I never could figure out the Flash. Wally West was the new
Flash but Barry Allen still had been the first. But when? Barry died
during CRISIS and if we were starting over how did all this work? It
just didn't make any sense to me. In fact, I'm still not sure how that
works. Green Lantern wasn't much better. The time frame needed to
cover the high points of what DC kept about the ring slinger(s) just
didn't seem to fit with the idea that this was supposed to be a whole
new DC Universe.
Of all the DC heroes, Superman and Wonder Woman worked the best.
With Batman, once Year One came out, most stories afterward were
written as if he was THAT character. It wasn't as seamless as the
other two, but I could still wrap my head around it.
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David Miller
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Posts: 3010
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| Posted: 17 October 2012 at 2:47pm | IP Logged | 7
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I only read a few issues of Batman and Superman before their reboots, and the difference I saw was that Year One could have been the origin for most of the pre-Crisis Batman stories I read, while Man of Steel couldn't have been the origin of any of the pre-Crisis Superman stories I was familiar with. If Year One had run in issues 396-399, issue 400 could have run unchanged(IIRC). On top of that, the changes to the Superman mythos were a prominent element in the new series. They must have much harder for long-time readers to ignore.
As to which was better for new readers, I was 12 and I stopped reading Batman after Year One, while I stuck with Superman until Byrne left.
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Stephen Robinson
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 5835
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| Posted: 17 October 2012 at 6:20pm | IP Logged | 8
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One thing that bugged me about the Wonder Woman reboot was the idea of introducing her as a novice hero -- one with less experience than Wally West, who was now the Flash (and curiously, less experience than Wonder Girl*). There was no way they'd do that with Batman or say, "Batman wasn't in the Justice League... it was some other guy in those stories," which is what they tried to do with Wonder Woman and Black Canary.
(I didn't mind Wonder Woman being introduced later -- I liked how it was done in the Timm-verse but in that reality, the Justice League debuted when she did, as well.)
*I think a lot of the challenges with having an "ordered" reboot lay with the refusal to wind the clock back and re-introduce Dick Grayson as Robin and so on. Why? Because that would mean altering the existing makeup of THE TEEN TITANS, which was a hit for DC. I think this was ultimately short-sighted, but there you go.
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Stephen Robinson
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| Posted: 17 October 2012 at 6:23pm | IP Logged | 9
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The funny thing was, Batman was being constantly "rebooted", but Batfans seemed either to not notice, or not care. The alien-fighting, shape-changing, time-traveling Batman I first "met" in the mid Fifties had little in common with the guy I found in the books when I returned to reading in the early Seventies!
*********
SER: And although Grant Morrison later tried to say it was all the "same guy," there was no attempt to do so back then -- even if it was all the Silver Age and thus all the "same guy." As you say, Batman was being "constantly" rebooted.
This is why the 52 reboot was so revealing: YEAR ONE, KILLING JOKE, DEATH IN THE FAMILY -- we're close to 25 YEARS for all those stories yet DC still can't just move on... or at least, not mention them. They had to explicitly state they "still happened" (even recreating famous panels from them) after the reboot. It's nuts... and it's almost as if the fans turned pros can't let go of a piece of their childhoods.
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Glen Keith
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 04 July 2010
Location: United States
Posts: 851
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| Posted: 17 October 2012 at 6:52pm | IP Logged | 10
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What's funny is that the Superman and Batman fans seem to have switched positions. As JB pointed out, Superman fans tended to be the obsessive types, focused on the esoteric minutia of the characters history. Meanwhile, Batman fans seemed to be more fans of the idea of Batman. his history seemed less important that what the character represented (which was cool) than that any single story or interpretation.* Now It seems that Batman fans have become the ones obsessed by the characters history, whilst Superman fans seem to just want their hero to be "cool".
Wonder Woman fans probably just wish a talented creator would come along who actually cares about the character and takes her seriously.
* Which is why I think that Elseworlds, or Legends of the Dark Knight for that matter, worked so much better for Batman than it did for most of the other characters. The framework of the character seems more mailable than it does for Superman or Wonder Woman.
Edited by Glen Keith on 17 October 2012 at 7:56pm
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Glen Keith
Byrne Robotics Member
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| Posted: 17 October 2012 at 6:58pm | IP Logged | 11
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"One thing that bugged me about the Wonder Woman reboot was the idea of introducing her as a novice hero -- one with less experience than Wally West, who was now the Flash"
================
They also did that with Hawkman, which necessitated bringing the Golden Age Carter Hall into the recent past as the Justice League's Hawkman, which caused more problems than it solved. I believe it was the lack of a consistent time line, and a lack of gutsy stick-to-intuitiveness that derailed the entire Crisis experiment. Too bad, with a little more foresight, it could have worked.
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Stephen Robinson
Byrne Robotics Member
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| Posted: 17 October 2012 at 7:26pm | IP Logged | 12
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Yes, imagine if CRISIS really had ended with the heroes sacrificing themselves to "reset" the universe and then the next month is MAN OF STEEL No. 1 and BATMAN YR 1 PT 1 and so on. Everything is new! I would have loved it at 13. It would have pissed off the older readers but you know what... maybe that wouldn't have been so bad.
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Topic Closed)
