Things are moving in an interesting direction concerning some characters over at DC. It was something that I was aware of, but had not thought too much about until Linda made mention of it. DC has had its continuity rebooted a few times. This allows some things to get cleaned up that were overly complicated and also allows some idea to get a fresh start. However it's getting interesting now in that there's a heavy nostalgia going on. Older characters that have been pretty much written off to obscurity or even killed off are getting a second chance to shine. Sometimes it works (Booster Gold, Nemesis) and sometimes it doesn't (Hal Jordan, Barry Allen). But there are other characters that have been altered with these reboots and taken in new directions. But with this wave of nostalgia the previous continuites are being considered again, and not just as a reference as to what went on before. The different takes on characters are all being considered in current usage.
The first to show this was Hawkman. Hawkman for a very long time was a continuity nightmare. At one point he was a reincarnated Egyptian King. Then he was from an entirely different planet. Geoff Johns married these two concepts quite well. This was back when he was getting a good reputation for plugging continuity holes.
Well, Johns is still doing this and most recently in the two characters that Linda made mention of: Brainiac and Toyman. These two Superman villains have had radically different interpretations over the years. Johns took the same approach with both characters. All the different interpretations have been minions or robots created by the "real" character. Not a bad concept, but it got used in the same comic twice inside of a year. Bad form.
Grant Morrison had a different take, and he laid the groundwork for it way back in his JLA run in dealing with Joker. That's when he introduced the notion of "super sanity" in which the character constantly reinvents himself on a regular basis as a response to the world around him. This is how we can have the same character be a relatively harmless mischievous prankster in one story, a criminal mastermind in the next, then a bad dog sociopathic killer, and then back to prankster. This makes every interpretation of the character from his creation decades ago a valid one.
Morrison did something similar with Batman, but that's less to do with the character and more to do with stories that he was involved in. Morrison went with the notion at every story every published about Batman happened. Everything from super villains, to mobsters, to weird rainbow creatures, to Bat-Mite.
This is an interesting difference. Johns took all the differences and tried to line them up to make them make sense together. Morrison took all the differences and accepted them wholesale. Of course this makes reading the Morrison stuff a lot trickier, but the payoff was worth it. It also served to keep the characters moving forward in interesting new directions and made for great stories.
Nostalgia's fine, but living in the past gets you no where. I'll be following the writers that drive new narratives, not the ones catering to those who think comics should be just as they were back when everyone wore bell bottoms.
No comments:
Post a Comment