Broken Frontier

Will the REAL Heroes please stand up? With popular characters in comics, ultimate comics, cartoons, novels, movies, alternate timelines and universes, it’s getting harder and harder to point to a character and even define which one is the REAL version anymore. Is that a bad thing? Maybe.

 “Yeah man! She was one of the first on the team!”
 “No she wasn’t, she came in with the NEW team in the giant-sized!”

 “Wow, yeah, when he found he could shoot webs from his hands-“
 “Huh? No way, he uses a thing on his wrist that he invented!”
 “How, he’s like 16?”
 “No, in college.”
 “Duh, he’s married man!”
 “No, he’s a clone!”

 “So just who the heck is his sidekick really?”

It started when DC, after having been around a while revamped their core heroes, changing little details in some, to totally overhauling others. It was really a practical thing. Those originals had been around since World War II and the world outside the comic page had moved on a good bit since then. So, the revamp actually revitalized those heroes and thanks to Julius Schwartz and those creative folk of the day, we have what is the model for the modern DC Universe.

Then in 1961, in that classic issue of the Flash we met the “Flash of Two Worlds” and the Multiverse was born! No more was it such a simplistic thing as over-hauling a bunch of comic book characters! No way, now it was the grand cosmic drama of alternate worlds! In actuality, a cool way to re-introduce some classic characters and dramatically expand the playing field of the newer ones.

But DC eventually got complaints. It took decades but it seemed to readers sometimes too confusing to have Earth 1, Earth 2, Earth S, etc. etc. Then there were the die-hards who argued things like…Well, Earth 2 should REALLY be Earth 1, it came first! Yeah, really.

So DC responded with the new milestone in comics, “Crisis on Infinite Earths” and traded in that clunky old, weighted down multiverse for a brand-spanking new, sleek, streamlined universe. As a book, COIE was a masterpiece, as an overhaul, overall, they did a wonderful job and the fact that COIE still sells as well as it does and gets put in new formats every couple of years speaks to its success in both.

Ah, but I also remember Marvel bragging they would never NEED to fix their universe, because they had gotten it right the first time!

But then Marvel decided to start introducing alternate versions of other characters, mostly in X-Men with stories like “Days of Future Past”. But the stories were limited to story arcs and then tucked away in history. Then some of the characters started migrating to the main universe and sticking around. Add to that the ever wonderful clone-turned-evil-destructive-cosmic-energy-duplicate…

It got so bad, I remember joking about proposing a series to Marvel that starred Scott Summers’ Psychiatrist, just for laughs. “Well you see doc, it all started when my wife, who was actually an evil clone of the woman I loved, that I thought had died, but that one turned out to be an insane cosmic god, who left the real one in an old mattress at the bottom of the river, attacked my alternate timeline daughter, who took the same code-name as her mom, that aforementioned cosmic god thingy, and I was barely rescued by my infant son, who had already grown older than me in an alternate future, but that was okay, because my disembodied soul possessing someone there actually still got to raise him…”

You get the point.

And speaking of clones…well, let’s not even go there.

DC then did a wave of “let’s examine the true traits of our characters by sticking someone else in the role and look at what really makes each hero a hero”. I actually thought those well done, different enough (as that was the whole point) and set in a single cohesive timeline. Although it did get a little funny when certain characters kind of kept missing each other in crossovers because their ‘replacement storylines’ ran at different times. “Bruce? Bruce is that you?” “Clark?”

These days, it seems most of those stories, characters, etc, have either dried up, have ‘returned’ or kept with the actual honest-to-god version, or distanced themselves from their clouded ‘alternate’ natures (although certain ages have peeked out now and again). Then Marvel launched a new line of books giving us an ‘ultimate’ version of popular characters (since, remember, they would never need to revamp). Now, Marvel is also launching the Marvel Age, which, you got it, is a ‘young-reader’ version of the same characters!

Now, I’m not saying any of those stories were bad, I personally love the Ultimate line for instance and I praise any effort to bring new, younger readers into comics. What I am saying is that we seem to go in cycles. Creators want to play with various versions of iconic characters and then when it gets too confusing, they whittle back to the original.

But lately, there’s been a new piece which makes it more complex. Our favorite heroes started making the leap elsewhere! Novels! Cartoons! Wow, even Movies (in case you missed the announcement)! And with each leap…we get a new version.

Let’s take an example…Spider-Man.

1. We have the original Spider-Man from the original Marvel Universe
2. We have Ultimate Spider-Man
3. We have movie Spider-Man
4. We have cartoon Spider-Man
5. We have Spider-Man India
6. We have Marvel Age Spider-Man
7. We have the novel Spider-Man

That’s seven versions all in fairly current production! Now, it could be argued that some of the above is linked more than others. The novel Spider-Man, for instance, could be argued to be the original from the comics (I’ve not yet read a Spider-Man novel though), or that the cartoon SM picks up on the movie SM, but does he?

Now, let me say a few things here…
First, I love continuity of characters, to me it adds something to be able to know a character and their world has history, and as that history accumulates the characters become more rounded, more real (usually). However, I am not a Continuity-Nazi like some folks. I do not go off because Dooperman ties his super-boots with a left-over bow knot in issue #3467 when EVERYONE knows he ties them with a right-over bow knot as was clearly established in issue #3, 200 years ago! Sheesh!

Second, yes, the versions, when all boiled down to the core of what makes each character unique, that core is indeed present in all, and that is what makes it wonderful and each version enjoyable to a degree.

Finally, third, I understand the need to make adjustments when characters leap from one medium to another, it happens, its important to their success.

The big question is, can it get out of hand?

Post your thoughts this week over at the OTB Forum, I’ll wrap mine on this topic next week, right here, same OTB Time, same OTB Channel.

BITS: So, egg-zactly when did Magneto become the King of Spain? Fandom has been buzzing about the ‘inspired’ art on a House of M crossover. Hmmm, remember when artists used to ‘create’ pictures, not digitally alter or trace them?