Casstoons: My Take on the DC Reboot

[espanolbot]

By me

Comments

[q99]

Yea, the *closest* to a successful one was Hal Jordan, "Parallax Hal" was actually menacing when he was around, and that one had concrete motives behind it (if a bit sudden), even if it got much-deserved backlash and was then replaced with Spectre-Hal (which I liked). Also unlike the others, they actually did something good with the clean slate they made and spent a lot of effort on the follow up.

That was one of the earlier ones and from that they could've gone "Hm, here's what we did wrong and right, we can do better" but Hal's fall, clearly a mixed bag at best, might as well be solid gold next to the ones of the last 5 years.

It's similar to their weekly/biweekly books in terms of learning from past ones. 52 was massively popular, but pretty much everyone after has been worse in some fashion. Lacking an end, spending issue after issue spinning their wheels, or both.

-Mary Marvel was all about mocking her "nice girl" image by jaded writers/editors-

Something which it also definitely failed at, as it's pretty much "Mary decides not to be a nice girl. The end." There's no meta commentary there.

-
None of these stories had anything to do with the characters themselves and that's why fail again and again. But DC still doesn't get it.-

It has taught me some valuable lessons; If I'm ever in charge of a shared universe, and I think I might want to mess with a character I don't have an attachment with, consult with someone who does have an attachment before making my decision and get their thoughts.

Also 'shuffling someone offscreen' beats "figuratively lighting them on fire with bad storytelling" any day of the week. My DC would be full of "So-and-so's heroing, just elsewhere. In city X. You probably never heard of it." "Oh yea, stuck on an alien world. Maybe they'll get back some year." "Non-active lantern? Why, they're on detached duty in galaxy Y! Very important".

[nezchan]

You know, that's something I don't think really happens that much on these books (or Marvel either, for that matter), is the indication that any sort of post-mortem happens following a run, or a storyline wrapping up or whatever. You know, sitting down and saying, "this worked, this didn't work, we're gonna have to go with this in the future, etc." It might happen, but from the results we get it certainly doesn't look like it happens often.

[q99]

I wouldn't be surprised if it happened at Marvel, in the recent string of story-events they tended not to repeat the same mistakes. They made new ones, but it wasn't the same ones repeatedly.

And even if there's no formal process, the writers and editors should get some idea just from the results and such.

[nezchan]

Ugh, I really don't want to be right on this. There should be a formal, or at least expected, process. For major storylines I'd say it's one of the most important parts of improving your stories and improving your brand. If it doesn't happen, then a lot of decisions end up being essentially by whim.

And yes, I know. It sounds like they already are.