Posted: 15 January 2019 at 8:04pm | IP Logged | 6
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One of the main things that I, as a reader, found exciting was that there was a story associated with these characters that went back decades before I was born. There were some contradictions baked in, yes, but the whole thing grew organically from humble beginnings to a vast series of interconnected stories that informed one another and made for a rich, colorful tapestry. Two Robotmen. The Golden Age Clark Kent at the Daily Star. The hunt for Deadman's killer. Things went a bit odd in places, but you could find out why and put it all together because it was all true to some extent.
Marvel writers had tried to force some bizarre connections between concepts and make everything more Marvel-esque (The Manhunters, for example) which forced some retcons into uncomfortable places, but overall, DC was richly imaginative enough to survive these anomalies.
Then the Crisis hit and the work of generations before was erased, supplanted by writers who assured us that everything was fine; they had this, when, in fact, they most assuredly did not. None of the stories fit together anymore. None of the characters rang true. Everything was now build on shifting sands and entirely dependent upon whatever someone thought up this month to fix what went wrong the month before. Continuity patches and fixes became the norm. New origins were pumped out like chocolates in a skit from I Love Lucy. Garbage fiction replaced the solid work done by professionals over the years, and all of it had to happen now, to fill in everything that had been thoughtlessly erased.
The inventions they devised were more sad than inventive. Character pasts became tortured, twisted series of nonsensical events. Heroes who had once been shown as wholly original on their world became legacy heroes on the new one and crowd scenes became over-crowded as every hero was now a franchise. The more DC tried to spackle over the cracks, the more they grew into faultlines. The solution? Do it all over again! And when that failed, do it again. And again.
I love the fact that someone puts the count at seven for the number of restarts. Over in the Legion, they maintain they only rebooted three times, despite the time-clones, extended hypertime storylines, and that weird bit no one talks about where Brainiac Five looked like Benjamin Franklin and Cosmic Boy was the Time Trapper. Even if that sprang from some existing iteration of the team, reimagining the book is still reimagining the book. Somehow that one doesn't count, though, nor do the number of occasions where one hero popped out of existence and another popped in, just to play with the notion of their wrecked history being in a state of constant "Crisis."
The solution to Crisising is to stop doing it. I truly hope this bit Bendis is playing with doesn't presage the next. On the other hand, the very mechanism of storytelling; the trust between storyteller and reader has been violated so continuously by the company that they've convinced themselves that betrayal is, in fact, their stock in trade.
"Little Miss Muffet, Sat on her tuffet, Eating her curds and... No. Crisis. Little Miss Muffet is removed from continuity so Little Bo Peep will now fill in for her. Little Bo Peep sat down on her, I don't know, bleep, Eating her... What's that? Who's watching the sheep? Um, Little... Boy Blue is filling her place for that part of her history... But he's unreliable you say? Is he? I didn't read his story before plugging him in there. So, um, it's a Boy Blue replacement guy, who can change shapes. He killed the original Boy Blue to take his place to get to the sheep, see? Even though they weren't originally his in the original story... What? If he's dead all along, who blows the horn that gets the sheep out of the meadow and the cows from the corn? Um... Wow, this is more complicated than I thought it was going to be... It was... give me a moment... Um, Hornblower, a new retcon character I just came up with, okay? Okay? Good... whew. Where was I? So, Bo Peep is eating something, right, and... DC already has a Hornblower? I'm not getting a royalty check for my guy? Well, f*ck this then. Bo Peep takes out a f*ckin' machine gun and mows down all the children who live in the shoe. The End. I'm outta here! Cue the appearance of the all-powerful Monitor Goose who waves her magic wing and restarts the universe... Little Bo Peep (because so many readers are invested in her character now that no one really remembers Miss Muffet. This change sticks.) sits down on her tuffet. (Reader polls show a definite love for the tuffet. We don't care that it doesn't rhyme. The story's better this way. We promise.) She eats pizza and smokes from a vape pen. We are edgy. Along comes a spider who tells her he has eaten her sheep. She learns a valuable lesson about leaving her responsibilities unattended while indulging herself with pizza. She attempts to kill the spider to avenge her flock. Boy Blue, Jack B. Nimble, and Snow White show up to save the spider. It turns out he is the original Miss Muffet's father in demonic form. Sorry. We meant Bo Peep's. Okay, it was both of them. They're sisters in this new continuity. Like Snow White and Rose Red. Except there are actually two Snow Whites with incompatible histories and Grimm is an entirely separate universe anyway. Damn. Things were going so well there for a minute... So, the sisters are all twin clones and everyone's memories are false. Because of demons. Now the line becomes a slew of demon-puppets and no one's history is as we said it was because their memories were wrong. Good. That works and opens up some storytelling options. It's a stealth Crisis. We can rewrite everything all over again and do it right this time. So, that one day when Bo Peep was sitting down to enjoy bean sprouts and a carrot (We are now veggie-edgy)...? She found Miss Muffet sitting in her place. Ha. Plot twist. Didn't see that coming, did you? The two battled across the seven galaxies for possession of the tuffet. It all resulted in a schism that divided the universe into two, one with Miss Muffet running the show. The other with Bo Peep. The two universes begin to unravel with the appearance of a third, in which Boy Blue is the ruler of all things. But he is asleep and the sheep and cows are running wild, devouring everything because of demons again. We were trying to get away from those but they fit here so it's demons again. The three universes battle one another leading to... a Crisis. The universe resets itself. Little Miss Muffet sits down on her tuffet and Bo Peep appears in a beam of light warning her not to go any further. A demonic spider lurks nearby..."
See? It's simple storytelling 101. Easy as can be.
Edited by Brian Hague on 15 January 2019 at 8:10pm
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