>>2704 One wacky idea does not save the comic industry. There's an anon here who's had to write a 5 page thesis just to make sense of DC's universe & all the cosmic level bullshit alterations made. Cape comics shouldn't have to be that complicated. Exactly why new readers are practically impossible to get. It's insanity in graphic form.

>>2708 It's born of old style shit back in the day where writing comics was all about the hook for the next issue to sell the paper, but nowadays binge reading pretty much exposes that and makes people tired of it. Shit, the issue I linked had that one idea and barely used Jarro after that issue. In fact the Justice Leauge issue after it is pure insanity because it's constantly doing splash pages of all the fucking heroes in the goddamned canon. Odd characters like Jarro need to get character arcs like the Clayface addition to the Batfamily team in Detective Comics, which still had an anti-climax by "killing" off Clayface a couple dozen issues in in some space mission bullshit, only to come back way too late into the story. Shit they even used his powers in creative ways, used his excess mass to create a danger room for training, etc. And they do him dirty by killing him off non-chalantly instead of moving him into a different story or even KEEPING his character development after Rebirth's run. You can tell there are way too many writers, way too much politics behind the scenes and it isn't even SJW shit that's holding it back. The comics are a clusterfuck for more then just that reason, comics were definitely dying because of backroom politics before the snowflakes came in, in fact that's what allowed it. On top of that the art quality's all over the fucking place, do these fucks know what a design sheet reference is?

>>2704 That's fucking woke. I normally avoid all current comics, so I'm totally out-of-the-loop on this. What issues can I read to follow this development?

>>2711 Starro gets recruited to fight the Omega Titans, basically a big ol generic "I AM THE CREATOR AND DESTROYER OF ALL LIFE" team alongside Martian Manhunter. Blah blah blah, Starro gets fucking rekt, Batman picks up a tissue sample and Jarro shows up as a joke in Issue 10 of Justice Leauge 2018 (2019?). 19 issues later, Jarro finally gets his first actual appearance as a new Robin, knocks on the Legion of Doom's door and manifests a giant fucking cannon to blast the shit out of them, and then actually succeeds, then he realizes he's outnumbered everyone to one, tries to fight physically but fails because he's tiny. So he dodges, and the Justice League follow him right, probably because Batman planted a tracker on Jarro. Jarro and Batman actually call eachother "Dad" and "Son". Suddenly Jarro gets a psychic future vision that everyone's going to lose (Starro did this shit too), so he freaks and grows giant and pulls Starro's old tactics of mind control starfish shit (Which he can't control at all because his mind control shit is indiscriminate if he's not personally latching on to someone's face He did this to Deathstroke in a joke panel earlier, don't remember which comic), but Batman talks him down and hugs him, literally treats him like his son Which is off the fucking wall because Bats is showing actual genuine warmness around this star kid, which subverts his actual characterization as a Broody McBitch for the majority of the comic's run, as per fucking usual. After that it basically reverts to it's usual schizophrenic storyline. The reason that Jarro even got airtime was because the writer previously rewrote Starro's personality as an immature, quirky villain, frankly a good change since it makes him more memorable now that the DC universe has fucking hundreds of Darkseid copy characters with the same personality. The writer isn't even the issue, he can write pretty good, he even WORKS with the batshit hook style of the comic industry, I've seen some of his other work, but he has a monster of an IP to work with, literally EVERYTHING has to get airtime. Even constructing a story with Justice Leauge is a fucking mess. People actually liked his personal touches, I did. But writers like him can't shine in this industry. Based on his personal touches, I'd read a comic about a batshit nuts starfish alien trying to do good because his human dad raised him on justice. That's literally a whole IP.

>>2709 I'm the guy who wrote the five page thesis trying to explain the history of the DC Multiverse. I actually like the convoluted shit. That said, while I think they should stop trying to make it not-canon, and just leave it as it is, they should also tell writers to not make their stories rely so heavily on the deep lore of all these characters and concepts. For special occasions, sure, do a big Crisis story that involves every issue that was ever published. But they do like one per year on average. Universal crossovers should be much more rare than that, or else they aren't even special. And when they're all like 12 issues long, they end up just running into each other, making it ridiculous to even try to follow continuity, since where do the solo issues go if the crossovers are constantly happening? And it's not like the Crisis on Infinite Earths, where it was a long conflict in the background and the solo issues continued happening at the same time. Which is still confusing, anyway. And more importantly, they need to tell writers to make their stories shorter and more self contained. If issues are going to be sold individually, then each one needs to tell an individual story. But that practically never happens anymore. Everything is written for the trade. So fine, but then floppies are fucking stupid because each one isn't a story, it's a chapter. The industry is going to need to transition to a purely Graphic Novel format eventually, but until then, it's all just a clusterfuck. And frankly, all the big companies of today probably won't even survive long enough to see that change, given that they've been infiltrated by SJWs, acting like a virus trying to make the host companies kill themselves.

>>2709 In short, comics are shit & were shit even before the era of woke.

>>2725 Comics had problems for decades, obviously. Marvel went bankrupt in the late '90s, and everyone was sure that comics were just going to be dead by the early 2000s. The thing is, the SJWs have made things so bad that they make the late '90s look good.

>>2726 I know. It's the killing blow further catalyzed by the corona virus.

>>2725 >>2726 The main contribution that the SJW have made to the fall of comics is to ensure that no one will miss them once the end finally comes.

>>2734 No kidding. We're at a point where being 'woke' is an advertising point.

>>2734 That sounds like a succesful destruction of a cultural aspect. and thats quite sad

>>2763 You're right. This is what they wanted all along. I'm sure they'd also like to continue to try to use it for their own ends, but destroying it, making people no longer love it, was certainly a primary goal. But I still don't think it will work long term. The ideas live on. The ideals live on. And so long as we remember them, they can be revived. It doesn't have to be in the same form, but they'll always come back, so long as we will it.

>>2809 They probably won't be able to destroy it forever but DC and Marvel specifically are dead companies walking. Maybe some day after both fold then the IPs will be sold off peace mill and several other publishers will be able to make cape stories in a more modest fashion like how they use to be. As for right now there's hope for independents to make their own superhero stories and for once not get smothered. There's plenty of public domain heroes and villains that could be revived and there wouldn't be anything stopping people from making sufficiently divergent clones of existing heroes. Personally I'd like to see a revival of golden era pulp crimefighters.

>>2823 With the way both companies run things by making a million different versions of their characters, nothing would be lost if they all completely went public domain.

>>2839 Nothing is ever lost by public domain. It just means more can be created. The problem is when companies go out of business but they still hold copyrights, so the products just get no new entries at all. Of course that won't happen completely. WB and Disney own DC and Marvel, and they'll never let them go. But they might shut down the comics divisions, and with that would also go the continuities that have been built over nearly a century. And of course very few people care anymore, especially since SJWs have made the current states of those continuities so awful, but I do think that's a sad thing to lose. If public domain were in effect, others could just write stories using the rich histories built up over that time. But now if anyone tries to do that, WB and Disney will sue the hell out of them. So those things will be lost. Not just the histories and relationships that will never be adapted with as much depth in other media, but also the more obscure characters that will never be adapted anyway. Only comics are autistic enough to make regular use of characters from the 1940s that were replaced by new versions in the 1950s. Modern adaptations would rather use characters just made last year and ignore ones that had decades of classic stories. They certainly aren't going to continue using the ones that were obscure to begin with.

>>2851 In regards to something like DC, all their characters are rip offs. Even now you can easily just create expies & create your own rich history that isn't built upon a junk mountain of retcons, reboots, universal altering events, endless deaths & rebirths etc.

>>2855 Marvel and DC are both built on many ripoffs. but good luck building your own history as rich as the ones they have now. What they have now took dozens of people at a time working for over 80 years. And things like the universal altering events can be fun in the sci-fi/fantasy stories they're built around here, so I don't see that as a negative. Same with retcons, which are not inherently good or bad. Some are good, some are bad, just like any element from any story. And to be sure, these 80 years of stories have plenty of bad things in them, but they also have plenty of good, and I think the depth that has been created over the sheer amount of content is a unique thing that can be used to make stories that just cannot exist without it. And it's a shame that we will lose something like that. Superman will be public domain soon, and Batman a year after that. But the relationship that the characters have had from over 65 years of crossovers will not be public domain. Hell, Superman will be public domain, but not Lex Luthor, or Brainiac, or any of his other villains except for the Ultra-Humanite. And when Luthor is allowed, it will only be the red haired one who used holograms a lot. The businessman version is about 45 years newer than that, so you won't be seeing any public domain stories with that version for a while. And sure, you create your own evil businessman, but the fact of the matter is that with being the nemesis of the world's greatest hero for 80 years, Luthor has come to represent something, both in-universe and in real life, and you can't just recreate that. Not with the same degree of meaning. You might be able to use Robin and The Joker a year after Batman becomes public domain, but you won't be able to use any of the growth that Dick Greyson has had over his 80 year history. You won't be able to use what The Joker actually represents. Even if you worked at DC and had access to the characters, would it really be the same to swap out Joker for another character like Trickster or Prankster or Toyman or any other number of clown or comedy based villains? I know the cynical answer is yes, that it doesn't really matter, but to any creator actually taking their work seriously and trying to create the best story they can with these concepts, it does obviously matter. And we have this initial response that it's silly to take these things seriously at all, because not only are they just some funnybooks, about guys in their underwear punching each other, but they're also just a corporate product, made to sell to dumb children. But I think we all truly know that it would be foolish to act like no actual good art has come from these products, and it's a shame that no more good art will come from them ever again.

>>2856 I can't agree it's a rich history. Nothing is concrete. Everything is rewritten. Nothing matters. No progress sticks. Hell even age & death are permanent problems that don't exist in big two comics. I don't care about 80 years worth of "history" when you need an encyclopedia to understand it all there's no linear way to read it all anyway. I don't know how many ways I can say big two comics just suck.

>>2866 >I can't agree it's a rich history. Nothing is concrete. Everything is rewritten. Nothing matters. No progress sticks. Hell even age & death are permanent problems that don't exist in big two comics. I disagree. There is progress that sticks. Batman's on his fourth main Robin. Characters evolve in ways we take for granted. I mentioned Businessman Luthor. A major change that's stuck and now become the iconic version of the character. You can say nothing matters, but well... that's fiction for you. You could even argue that's life. It's not the destination, it's the journey. Also, the fact that not everything sticks isn't a bug, it's a feature. The things that people don't like fade away, and the things that people do like stick around, or come back if some dumbass gets enough control to try to get rid of them. They tried to get rid of Wally West, only to be forced to bring him back a couple years later. They let Mark Waid rewrite Superman's origin and do stupid shit like make him a vegetarian and give him "soul vision." But it was so stupid that they nearly immediately implied that stupid stuff was erased due to Infinite Crisis, and then replaced the whole origin with Geoff Johns' version. But even all these origin rewrites are done to leave in the good stuff and get rid of the bad stuff. Man of Steel is a series of short stories set over ten years specifically so that all the good stories can still be canon, but the lame ones can be disregarded. >I don't care about 80 years worth of "history" when you need an encyclopedia to understand it all The fact that it's so complex is what I'm saying gives it unique storytelling opportunities. That's not to say that I don't understand the disadvantages. If I were in charge, I would certainly tell writers to make sure that you don't need to know much past continuity to understand their stories, except for special occasions that would have to be approved by editorial. To do otherwise is simply a bad business decision, since it locks out new audience. But even that would still allow softer elements of long continuities, like relationships that are built up over a long period of time, or simply what characters come to represent over time. >there's no linear way to read it all anyway. There is. Just start from the beginning. People say they don't want to because it's too long. Well fine, you can actually skip a lot. Frankly, you can skip like the first 50 years. Until then, writers didn't rely so much on continuity that they made things confusing, and any continuity notes could be made with little boxes just telling you the issue with the detail that they're referencing. It's only later that the writing style changed and ruined that. And all that said, I actually like it from an artistic standpoint. Once you understand it, there are a lot of great stories that wouldn't work otherwise. But I do think it's stupid from a business perspective, and get why a lot of people would simply not have the time for it. But that doesn't mean it's bad from an artistic standpoint. Being complex doesn't make it bad. To use an example that more people find to actually be good literature, Tolkien's legendarium is absurdly complex, and most of it isn't exactly light reading. It's hard to understand and not for everybody. But for those who want to delve into it and get immersed in the world, it's excellent. Now I'm not saying that the DCU or MU are as good as that, but it's the same principle.

>>2890 You're making a lot of unreasonable excuses for a broken system made of giant messes of continuity.

>>2891 You definitely did not read that post in one minute and 11 seconds. It's not a lot of excuses. It's two. One is that a lot of the problems are straight up misunderstandings by casuals. Things that just aren't true or are grossly exaggerated, and are obviously seen as such once you actually start reading. The second is just that the absurdly long form storytelling has advantages, in that it opens up storytelling opportunities that couldn't exist without that level of depth. That's not to say there aren't problems as well, but there are also advantages.

>>2856 >Superman will be public domain, but not Lex Luthor, or Brainiac, or any of his other villains except for the Ultra-Humanite. My first experience with Superman, other than barely remembered snippets of the first Christopher Reeves movie, was the Fleischer cartoons. To some degree that's still the "real" Superman to me. Those cartoons had Supes fighting one off villains that had nothing to do with with his rogue's gallery. You can make a great Superman story even in a vacuum. Batman too really. The first season of BMtAS had Batman fighting one offs most of the time. >You won't be able to use what The Joker actually represents But what does the Joker actually represent? There's been so many different takes over the years on the Joker and all of them are different. >>2890 >Businessman Luthor I never cared for that version. Give me a mad scientist any day.

>>2890 Except none of that means anything as it just goes back to the boring hero vs villain dynamic and that it's always moral to imprison for the state or the only ambiguity is having characters that kills for the common law.

>>2895 You have a good point that the Fleishcher Superman cartoons are definitely some of the best things he's ever been in. It is definitely possible to do good things even with the earliest versions of the characters. But my point is that there are a lot of elements that are closely tied to the characters, and that themselves add a great deal of meaning and storytelling potential, that will still be off limits. >But what does the Joker actually represent? There's been so many different takes over the years on the Joker and all of them are different. Well you can make stories exploring that. Many have. But you can tell that story in a different fashion when you deal with the history between Joker and Batman, as compared to stories that deal with similar themes but make it like the first time they met. That's not to say the latter can't be good, but just that you're missing out on potential stories that deal with the history due to copyright law not helping creativity and art, but hindering it. >businessman Luthor vs scientist Luthor This is an example of how changes not necessarily sticking isn't a bug, it's a feature. In Man of Steel they largely removed the mad scientist aspect from Luthor. But over the next few years, they slowly brought it back, when they realized that people liked that. By the early '90s he was a mad enough scientist to put his own brain in a clone body, and by Infinite Crisis they found a very solid medium between the two versions. The good things stick around, or come back when they try to remove them. In many cases, the changes revert, but in a way where they get to merge the good parts of both versions. This is kind of the point of when characters merge together, like in the Crisis on Infinite Earths, Zero Hour, and Superman: Reborn. The good things stay or come back, the lame things don't. >>2896 It really isn't always like that anymore, but I'll give you that it's certainly an underlying norm. If you don't like capeshit in general, that's fine. I get where you're coming from. But I do think many actual good stories have come from it over the years.

>>2893 You give me a whole ass essay of points we'll never fully agree on. Of course I'm not going to go through all of it. Think of me like the average person while you are the hardcore autist who knows the deeper layers of comics. On my side, the idea of 80 years worth of confusing history full of inconsistencies, retcons, mistakes, deaths that don't matter, characters that don't age, & stories that just repeat forever isn't something anyone would want to read much less spend money on. People want stories that matter & last even without endless milking. It's why movies, animations, & one off universe stories always stick in people's minds over the mainline incoherent mess.

>>2912 >Think of me like the average person while you are the hardcore autist who knows the deeper layers of comics. Precisely. So while I get that it isn't for everyone, I also think that there is a unique potential for stories that use that history, and it's sad that we're losing that. >stories that matter & last >one off universe stories See I never got this. If the universe is over, with no more stories, then how does that mean that those stories "matter more?" It's not like we ever see the consequences. Of course it also doesn't mean that they matter less. Because the stories stand on their own, and the existence of bad sequels doesn't mean previous entries are bad. Disney's Soy Wars milking doesn't mean The Empire Strikes Back is bad. A shitty SJW comic made today doesn't retroactively make an older comic worse. The existence of Before Watchmen or Doomsday Clock doesn't make Watchmen less good.

>>2914 I really can't explain it much better than people like structure. They like consistency. They like a story not over staying it's welcome. Characters that actually progress with permanence. Why would you be invested in something that can be ruined at any time on a whim or have everything rewritten? Why would I care about a new universe calling back to an old one? One it's not the old universe version of a character I care about. Two the point of a new reboot universe should be to draw in new audiences. Not to forever hinge on baiting people with nostalgia.

>>2914 A story that ends in any fashion is better than a story than never ends. The comic universe "continuity" is worthless from a narrative standpoint because consequences are irrelevant and there is no stakes. A couple of issues later anyone that dies is gonna be alive again because the corporate milking machine demands tribute.

>>2915 >They like a story not over staying it's welcome. Stories do end in big two comics though. Then there are sequels. That's not to say that modern capeshit stories haven't become way too long in many cases. But the fact that there are a ton of 007 movies doesn't mean the old ones are bad now. >Characters that actually progress with permanence. That does happen though. Of course, this also isn't actually what a lot of the complainers want. Because those same people frequently are the types who will watch Dragon Ball or One Piece and not complain that it's clearly a very deliberate choice that Goku and Luffy never change. >Why would you be invested in something that can be ruined at any time on a whim or have everything rewritten? It can't. They can't come into your house and change the old issues. They can reissue them with edits, which is concerning. But that can happen in any medium. It's been 23 years since the Star Wars Special Editions. They didn't actually make the original Star Wars bad. They were new cuts, and you can dislike those. The originals are still good. >Why would I care about a new universe calling back to an old one? One it's not the old universe version of a character I care about. It's really the same universe and the same character, usually. In the times where it's not, then yes, they treat it like an old character who hasn't been around for a while returning. Like when Pre-Crisis Supergirl reappeared one time in the Post-Crisis Supergirl series. Different character, but it was cool to see the old one reappear for a bit. >Two the point of a new reboot universe should be to draw in new audiences. Not to forever hinge on baiting people with nostalgia. Yeah, this is a problem. DC tries to have their cake and eat it too, and it always makes things more complicated, not less. But it does get new audiences. New 52 actually did get a lot more readers than before. The numbers show that. Then it all dropped off when SJW shit started getting too prominent, not to mention pure reader fatigue from so many universal crossovers that happened around 2015/2016. >>2916 The stories do end. Then there are sequels. Godfather Part III doesn't retroactively make the first two bad.

>>2917 Comic stories do not end. An issue ends. An arc ends. But what you're not getting is that villains don't stay locked up. Characters don't stay dead. Injuries mean nothing. The concept of time itself doesn't make characters age until it's convenient for the storytelling. Relationships begin & end more than a soap opera. I don't know how much more simple I can make this.

>>2918 The fact that Blofeld reappears in like six Bond movies doesn't make the previous movies that he was in any worse. The fact that there are like 25 Bond movies and if anything he's gotten younger doesn't mean that Dr. No is now a bad movie. You can try to count them all (or at least the first 20) as one story, and sure, in a way they are. But they're also individual stories, and some are good, some are bad. The existence of good ones doesn't make the bad ones good, and the existence of bad ones doesn't make the good ones bad.

>>2919 You are being very difficult & intentionally obtuse here. Believe it or not, bad sequels do ruin good original movies. It doesn't erase the original but it does destroy the credibility of it & the enjoyment for fans. A bad movie sequel is not equal to a bad comic either. Unless it's meant to be a continuous story, a movie ends it's story within the running time. A comic does not. It expects to keep going on putting new entries in forever & that you the reader are supposed to forever keep reading. There's no cut off point. That's only up to the reader themselves. Doesn't mean that character's story has ended though. Because officially speaking it's still going & going. With or without you reading. People want stories that begin & end. Even a series must end. People want that. Franchises that go on forever with a million excuses to avoid ending are what people hate. Look at Family Guy, The Simpsons, or any fucking long running animated sitcom still going. Damn you I want to read something where things matter, people stay dead, characters actions have permanence, consequences, progression, FUCKING STRUCTURE!

>>2920 >Believe it or not, bad sequels do ruin good original movies. It doesn't erase the original but it does destroy the credibility of it & the enjoyment for fans. Those fans are dumb. I hate the new Star Wars. It won't stop me from liking the new ones. I hate new Spider-Man, but there are plenty of old ones I like. >Unless it's meant to be a continuous story, a movie ends it's story within the running time. A comic does not. Most comics do. The Superman story from Action Comics #2 has very little to do with the story from Action Comics #1. And it continued that way for hundreds of issues. Modern stories are typically more than one issue, but they still end eventually. Then a new story starts. It is functionally the same as movie sequels, or at least the same as episodes of a tv show. The Simpsons has been awful for 20 years, but those first ten years (or eight or whatever you want to argue) are still great. Spongebob has been bad since like 2003, but the first three seasons will always be good. Hate the new ones. That doesn't change the old ones. >Doesn't mean that character's story has ended though. Same goes for any character who doesn't die at the end of the story. Doesn't matter. The story ended even if the character did not. There are a ton of licensed sequels to classic works that the public just disregards because they don't actually affect the originals. If they're good they're good. If not, oh well. They published a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird right before the author died. Who cares? There are a bunch of licensed Conan works not by the original author. Some are good, some not. Who cares? There are like 50 sequels to The Wizard of Oz. But you can enjoy the original without knowing that in the sequels, Dorothy realizes that Kansas is shit after all, and goes back to Oz. And by the same token, I can enjoy reading Saga of the Swamp Thing (which actually is many short stories and not one long one, but whatever) without caring about the tons of Swamp Thing stories that came later. I can read For The Man Who Has Everything, and the next issue of Superman has nothing to do with it. And the fact that later Mongul and the evil flower he uses in the story becomes a recurring Green Lantern plot point doesn't really matter. Some of those stories are okay too. Some are lame. Doesn't make the original worse. >FUCKING STRUCTURE! They do have structure though. The existence of sequels doesn't mean that previous entries retroactively stop having structure.

>>2921 You're impossible. You're insane. Fuck big two comics.

>>2922 Sure. But to be clear, I don't want anyone to think I'm defending the corporations here. Fuck them. They're the problem. I'm just saying there are unique storytelling opportunities from the very long and complex histories that have been built up over time.

No nickle in this dime regarding this adgumemt. Just wanted to say this one post >>2922 sounded like capeshit dialog and I wanted to say I thought it was funny. That is all.

>>2926 *Arguement

>>2921 Capeshit has all the literary value of a garfield strip stretched across several issues. Thats what capeshit continuity is. The one quality that makes capeshit unique is that its entirely incosequential. Its a made for radio pop song equivalent of comics except its target audience are sweaty collector autists. Its the definition of beating a dead horse for a hundred years straight. Its got its own set of hermeneutics and meta-narrative bullshit thats only understandable for autists that read NOTHING but capeshit, and entirely impenetrable for anyone who values his time above minimum wage. It is a literary evolutionary dead end thats only kept alive by the corporate machine.