An open letter to the Comic Book Industry (and particularly DC...)

With the massive recent announcements about DC's plans in September - namely rebooting their numbering system, along with some minor continuity and aesthetic tweaks to characters and a rejigging of the titles - we stand on the threshold of a possible future for the mainstream comic book industry. Many, many people have found their noses out of joint because of this decision, not least of which is the core group of "fanboys" who in reality are collectors and obsessives, gutted at the fact that they won't be able to experience Detective Comics #1000, to use one major example. Some of them are annoyed by the cosmetic tweaks, disagreeing with the fact that you can now see less of Supergirl's legs, or that Superman looked better wearing his underwear outside his clothes (btw, do you think he wears underwear at all now? That's a pretty tight-fitting cos he's got on...)

Other people are rightly excited about what represents the single biggest change to the way one of the majors does business in years. Sure, there have been "ret-cons" before, collapsing the sprawling multiverses in on themselves and picking from the rubble which characters and traits and histories survive. But often that's rebooted back to a certain point, or re-started numbering from a seemingly arbitrary point where the fans felt it changed too much. This time though, the "collapse" isn't an internally consistent universe reshuffle as far as I know (although that could change depending on the end of Flashpoint). Mind you, even if they do use Flashpoint as the means to jump start the universe, it's the motivation that feels different this time around. 

Previous Crises have tended to be about containing a complexifying system that is becoming unwieldy for readers and creatives. Anyone who is asked to take on the Batman or Superman franchise has decades of backstory to consider, and some very tough decisions made regarding sprawling, multiversal continuities, and the Crises were an occasional spring-clean that helped to simplify that for new generations of creative teams. It also helped the fans in their obsessive cataloguing of all the various different contradictory plot points and made it slightly easier for new fans, who could jump on the Wiki page for a character and enjoy the full backstory, but check the point of the most recent Crisis for an idea of where that character is currently at.

This reboot doesn't feel like that to me... 

I'll explain why in a moment, but I want to take a bit of time to talk about continuity. Continuity is important in the comic book industry because people who've been reading for 30 or 40 years want to feel as if they're reading the same character. A long time ago, they picked up a book about an iconic super (and not necessarily meta) character and quickly became absorbed in their adventures. It was easy to become absorbed because by their nature, these characters were painted in very broad strokes. Iconic comic book characters (let's call them "icoms") can be summed up in one or two ideals and deficiencies, most often. The world they live in may be fairly complex, the scenarios they encounter might be murky and not straightforward, and the bit parts, the supporting cast they meet and interact with may be toned in shades of grey, but our icoms need to be easily and readily identifiable, both visually and morally. This is so that the comic book industry wasn't a decade long flash-in-the-pan. 

It's obvious that if you took Batman from his first appearance and put him through the same rigours of characterisation and growth that one goes through in real life, or to make it slightly simpler, a character might go through in a fiction novel, he'd be a very different man from the one you started out with. That would mean you'd be taking a risk that a new generation of readers would take to him as well as they first did. What if he's too complex? What if they just don't like him, because he's gone from being a fairly well-balanced vigilante to a reclusive maniac, reflected and refracted by his rogue's gallery? Someone who was an out-and-out criminal himself?

Sure, Batman's been through that characterisation, and many more besides, but the fundamental thing about him, actually the most joyous and enduring thing about all our icoms, is that he snaps back eventually. He'll always revert at some point to the mould he was created from, simplistic, malleable, and ready to have another generation's wants and needs, hopes and fears projected onto him.

Which brings us back to the point of continuity. Continuity is not about continuity of characterisation. As we've seen, Batman or Superman or Wonder Woman can have been many people across the decades, even if continuity is kept tight, and yet they'll always revert back to their original nature. Continuity is something else. The biggest problems first arose when we broadly moved from the Golden Age of comics to the Silver Age. In order to appeal to a wider fanbase of readers (sound familiar?) the majors re-invented a lot of characters, dropping some and re-imagining others. Occasionally, a brand new character would take on the role of an icom, the change in The Flash from Jay Garrick to Barry Allen being a prominent one. As a comic reader, experiencing this change, it can be jarring and sometimes upsetting to see this happen, particularly if you're someone who has emotionally invested a lot in a character. It's the same as when a well-loved long-term soap character leaves or dies. People grieve, it's a natural response. But most readers (or viewers) appreciate the reasons behind it, and go along for the ride.

This happened, particularly in DC, a number of times, and that's all well and good; revamps such as these kept things fresh and exciting. But over the years, many of these "reboots" became contradictory and seemingly counter-intuitive (Superman was no longer "the last of his kind", but featured Supergirl, Krypto and the bottled city of Kandor, diluting that original idea of Superman's alienation) and so previous continuities were explained away as happening on parallel universes. Of course, as this continued, we soon had a sprawling multiverse that had to be catalogued and kept in check, occasionally pruned, but more often than not, complexifying the whole thing to a ridiculous degree, and making it even more likely that creators would bang up against a plot point or twist that made no sense.

Let's be clear on who this mattered most to: the uber-fans. That loyal, hardcore base of collectors, afficionados, obsessives, cataloguers etc, a group that swelled in number with each new generation. Only readers with such encyclopaedic knowledge of their universe would be able to spot these contradictions, and more importantly, be perturbed by them. These readers, by and large, had invested so heavily in the reality that was being created on paper that the slightest thing out of place could bring the existence of that reality into question. We are seriously talking about a different cognisance of the multiverse of comics than that of the casual reader. None of this is to slight these readers. Some of them went on to become the best creators in the industry, while others have critiqued the industry equally well, and many more of them have acted as a kind of filter that prevented creators and editors from going too far with their storylines. Keep this bit in mind.

Nevertheless,  these "multiverses" were becoming ungainly, so along came various Crises to do away with them, the first being Crisis on Infinite Earths. There was furore and uproar amongst some hardcore fans at this, while may more people loved it. It boosted sales, rebooted the universe, and gave a new generation of creators and readers the chance to join together in creating something fresh and relevant, something that most of the original fans loved too. So you see, there is major precedence for kick-starting a series of comics again.

However, each time a universe is rebooted and starts again, it quickly begins to over-complexify, connections between one comic and the others growing like brambles, ensnaring existing readers in a thorn bush of multiple titles, and preventing new readers from gaining access to what seems like a hermetically sealed universe: written for the fans.

The fact is that it's not so much continuity errors that result in the need for a Crisis as it is the increasing complexity of the universe itself. And this is the root of the problem. Successive teams of editors and stewards become incumbent in the majors, each tasked with increasing readership, making stories and characters interesting, and somehow retaining relevance in the modern world; and yet, both Marvel and DC have become increasingly guilty of the cheapest, nastiest form of marketing there is. They have used to continual Big Events to try and encourage what would be called "cross-selling" in any other industry. Here's how it goes...

Once upon a time, the majors made comics. Each was focussed on a character or a team, and told great, interesting, exciting stories (most of the time). Readers emotionally invested in these characters, and sometimes bought titles featuring a variety of icoms. Emotional reward was multiplied on the occasion when one character would appear in another title: more bang for your buck, if you like. The companies noticed this with glee, and so eventually started theprocess of having "crossover events". These worked primarily within "sub-universes", so you would have X-universe crossovers, JLA crossovers etc. These were exceedingly popular, and the Summer Crossover Event became huge, particularly in the boom of the early 90s when comic sales were already spiking. This was the era when the collector really came into his own, with the ability to buy all kinds of #1 issues of new titles, with foil, die-cut, hologram covers, variants, blah blah. We all know what happened after that... Comic sales plummeted, the bust that the industry never really recovered from, mainly because it didn't know how. It kept trying the same old tricks, releasing a plethora of new titles, having popular characters appear in multiple titles, and increasing crossover events. 

It is worth stating clearly that these techniques were not designed to increase readership: they were designed to make more money off the dwindling fanbase already purchasing the products. Tapping into a dream marketing psychology, the majors totally understood their market at this point - folk who would obsessively track down every issue their favourite character appeared in (or was mentioned in), people who were buying "rare" or "interesting" issues in the hope of making a buck in the far off future (the generation of still-bagged comics and trading cards), and a readership that loved a good crossover event. Thing is, these crossovers were no longer "sub-universe"; now a new title would be released running for twelve issues (or a year) that tied in all the other titles, and each of those titles would bear the brand of the crossover event. 

In reality, a lot of these branded comics only loosely tied in to the main event, but the effect of this was two-fold: folk who only read that one character, Batman say, was unavoidably aware of interesting plot points relating to the wider story, enough to spark an interest and that fire that says "I need to know". Equally, readers who didn't buy that comic, but who were hooked into the crossover by another means felt they might be missing out. I know this, because I've been there, trying to track down a list of all the related titles in a crossover event, working out the reading order (which was never, ever solid) and trying to piece together this huge sprawling event.

Bearing in mind that some creators know characters better than others, and that everyone handles a story differently, even the best of the crossovers have arguably been guilty of being patchy affairs, with contradictions and loose ends that sometimes get tied up in a later series or one shot. Sometimes it worked to re-invigorate titles (Age of Apocalypse, which was admittedly sub-universe, was a bold move that fans loved), but often it left a mess to clear up. This has recently so strangled the Marvel Universe that it's hard to know exactly what's happening. No longer are the majors running a Summer Crossover: Marvel has gone from Secret War to Civil War to Secret Invasion to Dark Reign to Siege to Fear Itself (with many others in between) causing the Marvel Universe to currently feel like one long story made up of countless titles. It's impossible to escape, and very difficult to keep track of it. DC hasn't been blameless of this either, with Blackest Night and Brightest Day and Flashpoint, with no room for a breath.

The major problem with this is that in the wake of a bunch of excellent comic book movies and games, the readership hasn't really grown much. As a casual reader who wants to read more or, even worse, someone who wants to start reading comics for the first time, it feels next to impossible to know where to begin. It's very difficult to go into the local comic shop and choose to buy Thor, for instance, when it has the Fear Itself banner over it and ties in to a large plotline. Not because it's that difficult necessarily to work out what's happening, but because if it's written reasonable well, you want to know, and quickly realise you'll need to buy more comics. Anyone with a certain level of awareness, at the same time as being suckered in also realises the tactics at play by the companies involved, and so the process of entering the comic book world becomes one of negotiating a serious of large and vastly psychological marketing tricks. I read a lot of comics, but I still consider myself a casual reader of the mainstream books. Walking into the local comic shop feels like negotiating alien territory sometimes: all those crossovers and sub-brands make me ignore vast swathes of titles.

And none of this is to mention the general darkness that has crept in over the years.

So, back to DC's reboot. Marvel have tried a "point 1" numbering system for a month, wherein each of those titles was designed to be a story that anyone could pick up and read. It kind of worked. Yet DC have decided in the wake of The Dark Knight and immediately following the release of The Green Lantern in cinemas, not to mention a load of video games, that they would reboot the entire universe. Not because of sprawling multiverses or difficult continuity, but because they wanted to reach across and pull fans from other media into the books. You can translate this however you want, based on your perspective: they want to make more money and profit off the licenses they own; they want to create a new environment in which a new generation of readers can discover comics, whatever. People can argue the motives till Kingdom Come...

The fact of the matter is, this feels fresh and exciting. Come September, after a month's clear out, new and casual readers, as well as long term fans, can walk into their local comic store and pick up a selection of DC books that interest them, knowing that they're catching it at the start. Collectors have a bunch of new #1s to keep poly-bagged, and DC takes a breath of fresh air and starts to look towards the future.

But here's the rub.

None of this will work if DC fall into the old trap. Sure there will always be "crossover": one character appearing in another's title, that kind of thing. And that's cool, it's reward. However, if DC start building up into universe spanning, year-long crossovers, they run the risk of alienating an entirely new generation of fans. As soon as people feel like they're being herded into buying twice as many comics as they'd intended in order to find exactly why their hero seems to be dead, or stuck in time, or rebooted or whatever, I'd bet money that sales will drop.

No, the way to do this is to keep the titles separate, by and large. To have self-contained stories, one, two or three issues long, tops. To have long-term characterisation happen slowly and subtly, but to avoid overarching conspiracies and world shaking plot lines. Let's really go back to the essential ingredients of what makes these characters great. Let's have storylines that are pop in their pace and colour, gritty where it's needed and deeply, intelligently written, with payoff and reward working from one week to next and within that title alone. Then you'll not only help audiences to travel from Smallville and the movies and Arkham City to the comics, you'll keep them.

If creators want to explore BIG storylines, keep them to separate titles. Heck, give em over to big, lavish hardback trades and market the hell out of them to your entire readership.

Fragments of DC's announcement give me hope that this will happen: Grant Morrison taking on Action Comics, not Superman, but Action Comics, makes me feel and hope that this will be one comic that will do exactly what it says on the cover. I hope... The three stream Super titles seems refined and sparse, allowing for clear storytelling within a smaller sub-universe, but without the need for crossover. And the slight dipping of the toe into the water of genre comics with Western stuff fills me with hope that one day soon, DC might return to pulpy horror, western and science fiction in it's main branded line...

Of course, all of this is moot if no one buys them. Then it's a return to the old numbering system and a red face for DC. I don't see it though. This is the biggest thing to happen in comics for a long time, and done properly, could well be the most important.