![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
This week's comics got me thinking about the long list of characters I got into when I was younger, collected the entire series of, and then saw them ill-used after their cancellation. And it occurs to me that DC is the main source of such ill-use.
DC:
Blue Devil: Found #5 at a drugstore on a summer trip, went back and got #1-4 over the next few months, collected until it ended. Character used as a Bad Example in Underworld Unleashed, "killed" in Starman, brought back, killed again, brought back again, finally seems to be in an okay state.
Blue Beetle: One of the post-Crisis launches I got into. Followed the whole series, largely picked up JL because he joined. Turned into a bad joke, redeemed, redemption ignored, redeemed again, ignored again, back to a bad joke, then a brief shining moment of competence before being shot in the head.
Booster Gold: Almost exactly the same as for Blue Beetle, but replaced "shot in the head" with "charred to a skeleton". In both cases, we got to see the body, as if editorial wanted to make absolutely sure we knew they were dead.
Captain Atom: You know, pretty close to Beetle and Booster, although he didn't draw me to JL, he got a longer run by a factor of two, and he hasn't actually been killed yet. Just sent to the Wildstorm universe and otherwise blown up a lot. At least we know he usually comes back from being blown up, as being blown up was in his origin story.
Starman: Got a decent run, mostly stable under one of two writers. Then killed off in the first event crossover to follow his cancellation. Came back, was dangled in front of readers for a few years before his plot was finally resolved, at which time it was revealed that Will Peyton died in Starman #1 and what we saw after that was the Ditko Starman with Will's memories and personality dominating the body for a while. OTOH, since we never "saw the body" it's possible that Will survived and got powers (i.e. Supernova), but the CHARACTER from that series is gone irretrievably unless there's some sort of memory transplant or binary fissioning or whatnot.
A lot of the DC characters I got hooked on early were abused pretty badly by later writers, often contemptuously so. By contrast, my Marvel experience hasn't been quite so bad....
MARVEL
New Mutants: One of the first comics I collected. And frankly, they haven't been too badly used. Sure, they get mangled and so forth every so often, but they had a run of 100 issues plus spinoffs and sequels and so forth. The concept gets brought back, and even the original team members. About the worst I can say here is that they were given to Liefeld...and at the time that happened, I didn't actually mind.
Alpha Flight: The first comic I "collected" in the sense of deliberately seeking out two issues in a row. Like New Mutants, there's been ups and downs, but over a hundred issues in the main run, and they always seem to bounce back. Even the recent apparent kill-off in New Avengers doesn't seem to be so serious.
Uncanny X-Men: Okay, I'll admit this one has been pretty badly treated in my eyes, but that's largely a function of my leaving the target demo and not liking what was being done to pander to the target demo. And there's such a revolving door that it's hard to say that any particular character has been picked on too badly (although Cyclops moped a LOT in the 90s).
Hm, a pattern does seem to be emerging. Most of my early DC faves were solo books, while most of my early Marvel faves were team books. It's easier to screw over a few characters here and there in a team book and not leave a lasting bad taste in a fan's mouth. Make Cyclops a mopey prick, and the X-Men can still go strong. Retcon the Beaubiers as half-elves, and the rest of Alpha Flight's still readable. But when you mess with a solo act, it's in much sharper relief.
Still, for whatever reason, DC seems to be a lot more malicious about crapping on my childhood/early adulthood favorites than Marvel has been (ignoring the ongoing Civil War thing, given that I'm mostly ignoring it and not seeing as much of the crapping-on yet). And when Marvel characters do get crapped on, they seem to bounce back more reliably (i.e. Spider-Man post-Clone, Captain America post-CW-I-Hope, Hulk post-PAD-firing, etc).
Edit: Oh, and I was focusing on titles I really got into early in my collecting "career". There's plenty of titles I started on later which were taken a dump on, but I wanted to concentrate on "comic companies killing my childhood" stuff. :)
DC:
Blue Devil: Found #5 at a drugstore on a summer trip, went back and got #1-4 over the next few months, collected until it ended. Character used as a Bad Example in Underworld Unleashed, "killed" in Starman, brought back, killed again, brought back again, finally seems to be in an okay state.
Blue Beetle: One of the post-Crisis launches I got into. Followed the whole series, largely picked up JL because he joined. Turned into a bad joke, redeemed, redemption ignored, redeemed again, ignored again, back to a bad joke, then a brief shining moment of competence before being shot in the head.
Booster Gold: Almost exactly the same as for Blue Beetle, but replaced "shot in the head" with "charred to a skeleton". In both cases, we got to see the body, as if editorial wanted to make absolutely sure we knew they were dead.
Captain Atom: You know, pretty close to Beetle and Booster, although he didn't draw me to JL, he got a longer run by a factor of two, and he hasn't actually been killed yet. Just sent to the Wildstorm universe and otherwise blown up a lot. At least we know he usually comes back from being blown up, as being blown up was in his origin story.
Starman: Got a decent run, mostly stable under one of two writers. Then killed off in the first event crossover to follow his cancellation. Came back, was dangled in front of readers for a few years before his plot was finally resolved, at which time it was revealed that Will Peyton died in Starman #1 and what we saw after that was the Ditko Starman with Will's memories and personality dominating the body for a while. OTOH, since we never "saw the body" it's possible that Will survived and got powers (i.e. Supernova), but the CHARACTER from that series is gone irretrievably unless there's some sort of memory transplant or binary fissioning or whatnot.
A lot of the DC characters I got hooked on early were abused pretty badly by later writers, often contemptuously so. By contrast, my Marvel experience hasn't been quite so bad....
MARVEL
New Mutants: One of the first comics I collected. And frankly, they haven't been too badly used. Sure, they get mangled and so forth every so often, but they had a run of 100 issues plus spinoffs and sequels and so forth. The concept gets brought back, and even the original team members. About the worst I can say here is that they were given to Liefeld...and at the time that happened, I didn't actually mind.
Alpha Flight: The first comic I "collected" in the sense of deliberately seeking out two issues in a row. Like New Mutants, there's been ups and downs, but over a hundred issues in the main run, and they always seem to bounce back. Even the recent apparent kill-off in New Avengers doesn't seem to be so serious.
Uncanny X-Men: Okay, I'll admit this one has been pretty badly treated in my eyes, but that's largely a function of my leaving the target demo and not liking what was being done to pander to the target demo. And there's such a revolving door that it's hard to say that any particular character has been picked on too badly (although Cyclops moped a LOT in the 90s).
Hm, a pattern does seem to be emerging. Most of my early DC faves were solo books, while most of my early Marvel faves were team books. It's easier to screw over a few characters here and there in a team book and not leave a lasting bad taste in a fan's mouth. Make Cyclops a mopey prick, and the X-Men can still go strong. Retcon the Beaubiers as half-elves, and the rest of Alpha Flight's still readable. But when you mess with a solo act, it's in much sharper relief.
Still, for whatever reason, DC seems to be a lot more malicious about crapping on my childhood/early adulthood favorites than Marvel has been (ignoring the ongoing Civil War thing, given that I'm mostly ignoring it and not seeing as much of the crapping-on yet). And when Marvel characters do get crapped on, they seem to bounce back more reliably (i.e. Spider-Man post-Clone, Captain America post-CW-I-Hope, Hulk post-PAD-firing, etc).
Edit: Oh, and I was focusing on titles I really got into early in my collecting "career". There's plenty of titles I started on later which were taken a dump on, but I wanted to concentrate on "comic companies killing my childhood" stuff. :)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Maxwell Lord: Manipulative business man
Booster Gold: Egotistical oportunist and so forth