Does anyone else think that Marvel needs a reboot?

[Willminus2]

The Marvel writers have been horrible lately about sticking to continuity. I am of the opinion that Marvel needs a Crisis type reboot to make continuity better. I'm going to write down how I would do this but that'll be later.


There would be alot of stuff that this would fix and hopefully afterwards Joe could do a better job as head editor and keep the writers in check with what they can and cannot do.

[XPac]

DC's reboot did nothing but screw up continuity for the next several decades.

Right now marvel has minor continuity problems. It's nothing compared to the mess DC has constantly had to try (and fail) to clean up since the first Crisis.

[Grapeweasel]

There are too many stars who think people buy comics to watch them write.

And there are too many people who do.

[bebopeva88]

The last thing Marvel needs is a Crisis/continuity reboot. *shudder*

[Beast]

Hell no! We're not DC. Do not bring that evil here.

[Asian_Invasion]

I really don't want the whole universe starting from scratch.

[eon001]

Marvel already has the Ultimate titles. Thats all the reboot I need.

[Willminus2]

I feel like those stars have ruined marvel though.

I mean the mess with the Hulk and Thor right now is enough to make me want to start over.

Plus the X-Men are totally weird right now with Angel and Wolverine and all the changes with them.

Don't even get me started on the Fantastic Four

[Joe Acro]

They already did. It was called Brand New Day.

Nothing has changed.

[XPac]

They did also sort of try a reboot during that whole Heroes Reborn thing.

That largely didn't turn out so great, aside from maybe Fantastic Four.

[irondude22]

They did also sort of try a reboot during that whole Heroes Reborn thing.

The Ultimates series is like the Marvel reboot. I honestly don't mind it because it give you a chance to start reading right from the beginning.
That said though I wouldn't want to see a reboot on anything else. There is just too much history!

[DDM]

No. Marvel just needs competent, cogent editors & a competent, cogent Editor-in-Chief to tighten Marvel's continuity. No reboot needed.

[BugsySig]

I think these problems could all be solved with some occasional recognition...Just stop ignoring the discrepencies. When was the last time anyone used a "*see" box at the bottom of a pannel? Like Wolverine shows up at the mansion and says "Man am I tired after that battle with the Hood.*" and there's a box that says "*See: New Avengers #12". It just puts things into a better timeline.

[Joe Acro]

I think these problems could all be solved with some occasional recognition...Just stop ignoring the discrepencies. When was the last time anyone used a "*see" box at the bottom of a pannel? Like Wolverine shows up at the mansion and says "Man am I tired after that battle with the Hood.*" and there's a box that says "*See: New Avengers #12". It just puts things into a better timeline.
Incredible Hercules. Nearly every month.

[Kyle_Ion]

No do not bring that horrible reboot here to marvel, we are doing just fine with out it. If you want all the reboots then go to DC

[Dr.J.]

I think these problems could all be solved with some occasional recognition...Just stop ignoring the discrepencies. When was the last time anyone used a "*see" box at the bottom of a pannel? Like Wolverine shows up at the mansion and says "Man am I tired after that battle with the Hood.*" and there's a box that says "*See: New Avengers #12". It just puts things into a better timeline.

I think that most writers today, are either to lazy to open up past archives,to make some atempt to match continuity,or simply could care less about it. As just a few examples. the earths mightiest heroes series, set in the early days of the avengers.The writer completly changes the first meetings that cap had with rick jones,as well as hawkeyes first meeting with jarvis.. The new jean grey one shot origin book that came out last week, has her involvement with fighting magneto in issue 1, completly cut out, as this version has them go into action without her.I hated what Miller did to the origin of DD in the man without fear mini back in 93.They have given hot writer/artists,unpredented power to ignore or change, whats stood for decades. As the years go by, what Lee Kirby Ditko& Heck did,is ignored more and more.

[DeadXMan]

and then there the guys that the fanboys bad name.

They bitch and moan over little thing when all you have o do is come up with an interesting a way to make things work. and receive a no-prize.

on continuity mess ups I give them a 3 DC a 9

[stingerman]

The Marvel writers have been horrible lately about sticking to continuity. I am of the opinion that Marvel needs a Crisis type reboot to make continuity better. I'm going to write down how I would do this but that'll be later.


There would be alot of stuff that this would fix and hopefully afterwards Joe could do a better job as head editor and keep the writers in check with what they can and cannot do.

Funny you should ask...I was thinking of making a bringbackmarvel.com website :biggrin:

[Timeslip]

OMG...no, Marvel does not (and thankfully never will) need a reboot. Horrible idea. DC is going on 23 years of screwed up continuity because of their reboot. As a matter of fact, their first reboot has been followed up with Zero Hour, Infinite Crisis, and now Final Crisis...still screwed up. They even realize they messed up.

[Pixie_Solanas]

No. But I do believe this Secret Invasion nonsense needs to be wrapped up and wrapped up soon. Enough is freakin' enough. So the Skrulls invaded. And so?

[atomicturtle]

Maybe ALL the Marvel heroes can make deals with Mephisto. I think that would be a great step for the 616.

[BugsySig]

I have to say, I hate when writers use the lack of continuity to cover their asses as well. Like Quesada constantly saying we don't know how much time has passed between OMD and BND so don't pass judgement...WTF?!? That should be spelled out immediately. Is BND before or after SI? We should know. When you have a character in a dozen books every month, you need to figure this stuff out. Thats a freakin BS cop-out! Just because they haven't figured it out themselves doesn't mean the reader should suffer. It would be one thing to pull that stuff with someone D-List like Thundra, but Spidey effects multiple books and storylines at any given time.

[Bamf25]

I will go on record as to prefering retcons to reboots.

[mikekerr3]

I have to say, I hate when writers use the lack of continuity to cover their asses as well. Like Quesada constantly saying we don't know how much time has passed between OMD and BND so don't pass judgement...WTF?!? That should be spelled out immediately. Is BND before or after SI? We should know. When you have a character in a dozen books every month, you need to figure this stuff out. Thats a freakin BS cop-out! Just because they haven't figured it out themselves doesn't mean the reader should suffer. It would be one thing to pull that stuff with someone D-List like Thundra, but Spidey effects multiple books and storylines at any given time.

All the time of the Deal and the vacation happened between the two issues of NA where he changed costumes. That means that According to Joe Q up to 5 years happened between those issues?:confused:

You would think that at least Tom and Joe could get the story straight between them. The fact that they can't makes me doubt that they have a clue..

I would think that a reboot might work but it would take more competent people than those two, so it's better left undone.

[Guru_Pitka]

The Marvel writers have been horrible lately about sticking to continuity. I am of the opinion that Marvel needs a Crisis type reboot to make continuity better. I'm going to write down how I would do this but that'll be later.


There would be alot of stuff that this would fix and hopefully afterwards Joe could do a better job as head editor and keep the writers in check with what they can and cannot do.

If you feel the current regime has done a bad job with continuity - then how would them doing a reboot be an improvement?

The continuity problems all seem pretty recent to me, so the answer would seem to be getting rid of the current crew.

The parallel to DC is interesting to me. Superman & Batman readers didn't realize they were reading the adventures of Earth-2, and that at some given point that series switched to Earth-1.

We just saw that happen again now, decades later with Spider-man. We now have an Earth-1 and Earth-2 Spider-man.

So if left unchecked....Brand New Day will require a Crisis on Infinite Earths eventually to deal with this.

I don't think a reboot is necessary. Clever writers can undo any damage done recently. Great editors can get things back on track.

But if you are going to do a reboot, please don't let it be by the very same people who screwed everything up in the first place. At the very least not with the same editor in chief.

A better solution would be to start a new line of comics. Basically another Ultimate line and let a few years worth of sales determine if both can survive or one gives way to the other.

[Kyle_Ion]

I will go on record as to prefering retcons to reboots.

I should know this by now but what in the world is Retcons?

[RedRonin]

Continuity has never been perfect. No need to reboot cause there are some problems with continuity or creative decisions you don't like.

[Jake V]

The Marvel writers have been horrible lately about sticking to continuity. I am of the opinion that Marvel needs a Crisis type reboot to make continuity better. I'm going to write down how I would do this but that'll be later.

Oh my god, I can't wait to read this.

It'll be the comedy event of the week!

[Skeets]

Didn't Dan Slott solve all the continuity errors with that issue of She-Hulk?

[Leocomix]

Reboots **** up continuity. They don't fix it.

[Expletive Deleted]

Wanna make continuity perfect? Cancel everything.

[TeamED209]

Ultimate universe has gotten very dull so maybe a reboot could work where they merged some of the universe's?either that or someone needs to take control over at marvel and fix all of joe's little indiscretions in the 616...also continuity mishaps seem to happen alot more in marvel than at dc imo...

[rZi]

DC's reboot did nothing but screw up continuity for the next several decades.

This is the biggest problem.

It would have BND syndrome i.e - "did this story happen?" "what did and what didn't?"

It gets very confusing in the DCU as a result, what is cannon and what isn't.

[hawkeye comeback]

no reboot we all now things like caps death, the odd avengers teams will eventually go back to a classicier configuration

[Bamf25]

I should know this by now but what in the world is Retcons?


Retcons are changes to a story or character after it occurs. This change overwrites a previous piece of history, changes characteristcs, or alter what happened in the story. For instance, Jean Grey died on the moon in Uncanny 137, this was later retconned that she was actually at the bottom of the river and the Phoenix entity destroyed itself. Once this change occures the reader is supposed to ignor that previous piece of info and take the new as connon.



AS for BND this is not technically a reboot. Spidy was married to MJ and the stories did happen, BUT the entire MU has been made to forget all this. I know a universe wide confusion/forget spell is just as confusing as a reboot, but it is different.

[Joe Acro]

Wanna make continuity perfect? Cancel everything.I dunno. I think going down to one title might work.

[Expletive Deleted]

I dunno. I think going down to one title might work.Nope. That pesky human element means someone might make a mistake. And we can't have that, now can we?

[CyberCoyote]

No. Marvel just needs competent, cogent editors & a competent, cogent Editor-in-Chief to tighten Marvel's continuity. No reboot needed.

It's a fine ship but the Captain and crew just let it run wild. They need to grow some stones and treat the MU like a cohesive product rather than a bunch of independent books with some slight things in common. Put some footsies down and explain to writers that what they write either needs to make sense for actions or characterizations that have been established or offer a half logical reason WHY things have changed in a said story.

I'd take a reboot if they'd stick to it, but it always rubberbands back to the chaos that spurned it in the first place.

[Joe Acro]

Nope. That pesky human element means someone might make a mistake. And we can't have that, now can we?
We'll just get robots to make it.:biggrin:

[pharoahe22]

I think these problems could all be solved with some occasional recognition...Just stop ignoring the discrepencies. When was the last time anyone used a "*see" box at the bottom of a pannel? Like Wolverine shows up at the mansion and says "Man am I tired after that battle with the Hood.*" and there's a box that says "*See: New Avengers #12". It just puts things into a better timeline.

I've been saying this for a lonnnngggg time...that's all that's really needed. I mean, there are some books that are pretty bad like Loeb's Hulk, but I'm collecting more books now than I ever have: Iron Fist, Moon Knight, Captain Britain and MI:13, Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain America, Wolverine, X-force, NA & MA, Thor, Hercules, AXM, etc...I think overall, Marvel's doing a really good job...they just need to tighten the screws in certain areas.

[Bamf25]

Marvel used to be the king of the see issue boxes, and it was helpful. This is something DC has never done with any consistancy, and in fact seems very rare in their books. I am not sure if this would help but it would not hurt.

The main problem any publisher has is that fans want to see popular characters, so they spread through multiple book, leading to different writers, different stories somehow magically taking place at the same time. Not excusing the problem, but imo this is perhaps the biggest reason for the continuity issues. Could it be solved by writters acually talking, to a degree, but getting all times and stories to agree chronologically is virtually impossible when a character is in mulitple titles.

[Xeno]

AS for BND this is not technically a reboot. Spidy was married to MJ and the stories did happen, BUT the entire MU has been made to forget all this. I know a universe wide confusion/forget spell is just as confusing as a reboot, but it is different.

No, Peter and MJ never got married - so sayeth Quesada. The stories happened but Peter and MJ were never married. The entire universe forgot Peter's public identity. The marriage just never happened; nothing to forget.

I'm not defending OMD/BND - just noting that you don't have it straight.

[Herr Mike]

I just can't get worked up over continuity issues. Why, when I read Comic A, should I care about Comic B? Yeah, if they are both Secret Invasion tie-ins, but I don't care if Daredevil is in two comics a month, and neither references the other.

Continuity bitching seperates the fanboys from the folks who just want to read good comics.

[BugsySig]

No, Peter and MJ never got married - so sayeth Quesada. The stories happened but Peter and MJ were never married. The entire universe forgot Peter's public identity. The marriage just never happened; nothing to forget.

I'm not defending OMD/BND - just noting that you don't have it straight.

And that's why Quesada sucks. You can't have it both ways. Either history was changed or everyone's memory was erased. One or the other.

[Expletive Deleted]

Why not?

The marriage was retconned, the ID reveal was forgotten. Easy as pie.

I mean, using one solution for both would've been more elegant, but I think they gave up on "elegant" pretty early on in the process and settled for "functional."

[Blade X]

The Marvel writers have been horrible lately about sticking to continuity. I am of the opinion that Marvel needs a Crisis type reboot to make continuity better. I'm going to write down how I would do this but that'll be later.


There would be alot of stuff that this would fix and hopefully afterwards Joe could do a better job as head editor and keep the writers in check with what they can and cannot do.

I think Marvel needs a non Crisis partial reboot. In other words, Marvel needs to reboot the entire MU back to an earlier time in the history of the MU, and they need to do a cold reboot WITHOUT doing any kind of stupid convoluted in continuity story.

[Herr Mike]

Reboots are fun for a while but in a couple years you are back to square one. I don't see why one is needed at all. If you aren't a slave to continuity it's just not an issue.

I agree titles need a the "slate cleared" every so often, but you don't need an explicit reboot. I read X-Men religiously in the early 90's, quit after Onslaught, and then when I tried to come back in 2001 or so it didn't feel the same. But then Morrison's New X-Men came out, and that was easy to get into. A few years later, Astonishing came out, and it was likewise accessible.

[DC906270-BIL]

continuity is important and is one of the main reasons i read comics and take them quite seriously. without decent continuity, i would feel that its unimportant to follow the character, and that really the comic is only about making money for marvel. i buy at least 5 comics per week, so i am worried about lining Marvel's pockets.
Iron Man is everywhere at the moment, as are S.H.I.E.L.D., and it makes we wonder what is the timeline between the various plot lines in each book at moment. Is Iron Man and S.H.I.E.L.D fighting global terror (Invincible) at same time as fighting Skrulls (SI) at same time as dealing with Red Hulk (Hulk)?

[Guru_Pitka]

continuity is important and is one of the main reasons i read comics and take them quite seriously. without decent continuity, i would feel that its unimportant to follow the character, and that really the comic is only about making money for marvel. i buy at least 5 comics per week, so i am worried about lining Marvel's pockets.
Iron Man is everywhere at the moment, as are S.H.I.E.L.D., and it makes we wonder what is the timeline between the various plot lines in each book at moment. Is Iron Man and S.H.I.E.L.D fighting global terror (Invincible) at same time as fighting Skrulls (SI) at same time as dealing with Red Hulk (Hulk)?


I also feel continuity is one of the main reasons I read comics. :smile:

I suspect that many downplaying continuity are just downplaying the previous status quo. And many people celebrating change are just celebrating a specific change but want that change or new continuity to become the status quo.

Killing off an iconic character and replacing him is a change. But killing the replacement and restoring the iconic character is a change too.

The fact is it comes down to most of us just wanting to see things done our way. Complaints about continuity and resistance to change are mainly just smokescreens for that.

[chastmastr]

I think Marvel needs a non Crisis partial reboot. In other words, Marvel needs to reboot the entire MU back to an earlier time in the history of the MU, and they need to do a cold reboot WITHOUT doing any kind of stupid convoluted in continuity story.

Mid-2004, just before Disassembled/House of M/Decimation/Civil War, as well as all the depressing anti-heroic backstories they've retconned in (Wolverine's new memories, Illuminati, etc.) would work for me.

I'd split the MU off somehow for the people who like the new paradigm, but I want classic, heroic Marvel back, thanks. They already had the Ultimate universe (with heroes not trusting each other, in some cases being really non-heroic sorts, few mutants, and an unmarried Peter Parker), but now they've made taken away "classic" 616 Marvel from the rest of us who liked it. I've discovered Spider-Girl and I love it, but it's not enough. I enjoy Marvel Adventures, but it's sort of non-continuity even across the MA line (otherwise I'd see it as the foundation for a new, heroic, classic-model Marvel Universe; I could accept that...). Love X-Men First Class and Wolverine First Class, but they're set in the past, and we're still stuck with a really miserable present.

They've been systematically destroying the Marvel Universe we'd read and loved all our lives, and dragging our heroes through the mud. The Wolverine I care to read about was not a "bad guy"/mind-controlled for decades and decades. The Tony Stark, Reed Richards and others I care to read about would never, never do what they did in Civil War. Professor X would never have kept secrets like Vulcan and that abortive crop of dead X-Men from his other students, especially with the family ties involved. And virtually none of the Illuminati would have kept all those secrets from their closest confidants, loved ones and family members. Namor and Tony? Maybe. Not many loved ones there. But not Reed, not Charles, not Stephen. To me all of this is some freakish alternate universe which abruptly started in mid-2004, yanking creators off of books in order to destroy them under other writers (Jurgens didn't get to do his Thor-redemption storyline he was talking about in interviews before they forced Ragnarok onto the book -- it was going to be the triumphant finale after he came back through time to stop himself from taking over the world, a redemption arc of some kind, and then bam, Oeming is on solely to end the book altogether. Grrrr -- and I'm not a big Chuck Austen fan but I'd sure prefer his own Avengers to Disassembled. Heck, I'd prefer 32 blank pages a month to Disassembled) and a whole lot of dicking around with editorially-mandated crossovers designed to radically alter the MU into something anti-heroic and unrecognizable. I buy very few mainstream Marvel books now -- I love Van Lente's Herc book, I'm giving X-Men in San Francisco a try -- but most of my Marvel buying is in miniseries which aren't focused on the current Marvel paradigms, one-shots (Logan's been classic Logan in those, even if the main books are not the Logan I want to read), books set in alternate continuities (MC-2, Adventures) or in the past (Wolverine: First Class, X-Men: First Class) -- and of course a lot of back issues I never realized were good, solid stories at the time.

But I miss my heroes and I'd like them back. Preferably with the backstories and histories they had till everything started going wrong. There was so much more potential in the Marvel we had before that -- so much stuff with the increasing acceptance of mutants (Xavier's dream beginning to really show signs of fulfillment at last, with a more nuanced approach to human/mutant relations than we'd ever had before, a developing mutant subculture in books like Morrison's X-Men and District X, Xavier's school finally gone public with an actual student body of more than 5-10 kids, etc.) was just shot dead, story-wise, by Decimation alone. We were seeing some great solid character development in Spider-Man, in Mary Jane, in Aunt-freaking-May for God's sake, but that all had to go, and now that really has been rebooted to something out of the 1970s. (It'd work great as Untold Tales of Spider-Man: Season Two, but did they have to get rid of all the good development from the last 20 years?) And so on, and so on, and so on.

I don't want a reboot; I want a restoration. Let the new paradigm have its own books, but let us old-style Marvel fans have something too. It's not too late...

David

[jeffmace]

Yes, in the worst way.

Recommended method - "Crisis" level event. That'll straighten things up quite nicely.

[The Black Guardian]

I feel like those stars have ruined marvel though.

I mean the mess with the Hulk and Thor right now is enough to make me want to start over.

Plus the X-Men are totally weird right now with Angel and Wolverine and all the changes with them.

Don't even get me started on the Fantastic Four
Then imagine what those stars would do if they rebooted the whole thing.