"...certain characters are said to have lived longer..." Than WHAT? Bruce Wayne has lived longer than Dick Grayson, Barry Allen has lived* longer than Wally West, Perry White has (likely) lived longer than Clark Kent and Lois Lane.

I've said before and I'll say again - there's real life and there's comic book life. The two CAN'T be compared in most cases and shouldn't in others. If we take the plain human heroes... they can't recover in a month from some of the injuries they take... but they do. They simply cannot do what they accomplish in comics. Swinging on a silken line after diving off a thirty story building? Impossible. Ricocheting a disc off four HUMAN targets and returning to the slinger's hand? Impossible. Firing an arrow that bounces three times and hits its target? IMPOSSIBLE. But it's nothing in comics.

Time passes, people get hungry and then have to poop, people have to sleep and heal - all of this is obviated in comics**, and it should be. These are action/adventure stories. Even the human parts of them support the heroes, not turn into discussion groups.

But now DC wants a sixty year old Batman and forty-eight year old*** Robin? Yeah, sure, whatever.

*If you call that living... :)

**Except for weirdos who want to see Reed Richards topless or Batman making hot monkey love to Catwoman. And that's porn, not comics.

***I once figured that Batman is 12 years older than Robin. That seems to fit for all common needs.

WHY OH WHY OH WHY OH WHY OH WHY OH WHY OH WHY OH WHY OH WHY OH WHY OH WHY OH WHY OH WHY OH WHY OH

FUCKING WHY DC?

 

Just get good talent and tell good stories with these amazingly rich characters you're blessed to have as your IPs. 

The only difficulty are the fans themselves and the fans turned pro that write and edit the books and their obsession for all the stories to "count".

You've read and enjoyed it? Then it counts. 

I'm well past my era of checking out new comics every month unless something specific catches my eye, except for Batman which I'm always sort of interested in what's going on (don't know why, really).

I've read the Snyder run and found it underwhelming with the constant "remixing" of older stories but I understood the thinking behind it. These things go round and round and for new readers (if they indeed exist) maybe this retreading of old ideas is kinda new and exciting. Kind of the reasoning behind the Star Wars sequels.

I still think new, original stories are always preferable but I get it. The Joker has to return in some spectacular way from time to time. The Riddler is due for a new re-imagining and to be showed as something more of a menace. It never worked the 35 times they tried that before but that's the way it goes.

I tried the Tom King Rebirth thing and I hated it, so I didn't follow it. It doesn't count for me. Batman married Catwoman and then got stood up or whatever? Fine, I don't care. I'll be back when another team is on it and it looks good. Not that hard.

Same applies for the rest of the books. If they put their "braintrust" to work on original, fresh story ideas and arcs instead of trying to solve the impossible to "solve" continuity issues maybe nobody would care about them in the first place.

Exactly. 

James Bond (talk about a character that's really fundamentally attached to a specific historical era!) seems to be doing fine. Put smart people on it, tell good stories. Nobody will care if this is in fact the very same James Bond that had a jetpack and a scottish accent or was fighting Jaws in a spaceship. The character's universal appeal is not about that.

Movies use to do this fine. But as you said, the multiverse is coming now for the films. I'm wary of the idea. They have a great thing going on and want to get the worst, messiest part of the comics in it? Doesn't sound like a great idea to me.

(I mean the multiverse as we comics fans understand it, and going into the wormhole of "explaining everything". Movie fans don't need that, there's no problem to fix. Heath Ledger was the Joker, then Joaquin Phoenix was the Joker in a completely different movie and portraying a completely different character and now Jared Leto is back as the Joker for this Justice League thing and nobody bats an eye. Again, not hard if you are not very especially motivated to overthink it)

——-

Eh?

As of now, DC has not announced any plans for more stories set in the Linearverse, but it is a new club in the bag for writers with a story to tell."

So it's not the mainstream DC Universe -- it's just there in case a writer has an idea for a story. OK, fine. As long as it doesn't bleed into the main books who cares if the Linearverse is there or not? If you like the idea, cool. If you don't, you can ignore it. (The two-issue story that introduced the Linearverse didn't cross over into any other titles.)

No reason to get upset over what's probably no big deal.

Haha I feel you but better not open THAT can of worms, JB...

I'm all for ignoring stuff, that was kinda what I was saying.

But this is not it. So now they have 52 earths AND an Omniverse and a Linearverse whatever that means? And of course if a writer has an idea for a story there's Elseworlds (is there?) and the "Earth One" thing (still a thing?) or Black Label, or... just tell the damn story! (In my best Grampa Simpson impression)

It's more over complication for no reason. Reminds me of something a Marvel president (can't remember which!) once supposedly said: "I have a Harvard PHD, if I don't understand these things (meaning comics), I'm not the problem".

He's kinda right.